


My Working Week and My Sunday Rest

by pineapplecrushface



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Dream Sex, Dream Sharing, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oblivious Steve Rogers, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Sharing a Bed, Steve's Weekends in Wakanda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-06-05 16:15:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15174524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pineapplecrushface/pseuds/pineapplecrushface
Summary: Steve's life after he throws down the shield and hides with Bucky in Wakanda is composed of the following: moping, having 80-year-old epiphanies, dramatically tearing the Avengers symbol off his uniforms, learning too much about goats, fighting, fighting more, fighting even more, trying not to make it weird, definitely making it weird.





	1. Chapter 1

“So,” Pepper said, “I hear you’ve been spending a lot of time in the cryo chamber.”

He had to hand it to Pepper: she had managed to wait nearly four hours into their meeting to ask, and she made it sound like it had just occurred to her.

“No, I’ve been spending most of my time out on missions,” he said.

“Ah,” she said. “I must have been misinformed.”

“Yeah, well, there’s a lot of misinformation going around,” he snapped.

“Steve,” she said. “When you don’t talk to anyone for months at a time, misinformation is bound to happen.”

He softened. “I know. I’m sorry. I do like to go in there when I need to think. It’s quiet, and…I don’t know, Bucky always helped me figure things out.”

Actually, at first he had avoided the cryo chamber. It was easy to do in the first few days after he had arrived in Wakanda, when he still had to plan a rescue mission in the middle of the ocean and figure out how he was going to keep them all safe. He went on autopilot for a while, a state he always fell into when there was something important to do. Truthfully, there were times when he wished he always had a mission. It gave him a quiet, rational clarity that he never really got otherwise.

Two weeks after Bucky got himself put into the cryo chamber, however, he had awakened, disoriented and upset without understanding entirely why, and no matter how long he tried to calm down there was just nothing for it—he knew where he had to go. He padded barefoot, in sweats and one of Bucky’s shirts, down to the room where Bucky was kept. He knew there would be staff there monitoring him, but he wanted…he didn’t know what. To see him, to know he was alive, he guessed. He needed it with a strength that he recognized from the years of chasing after Bucky, the determination and constant drive pushing him on because he needed a glimpse of him more than he needed to eat or sleep. 

He had seen him in the chamber, of course. He had watched him go into it, the frost creeping over him and preserving him in a bruised and exhausted stasis. But here in the night, with the lights dimmed in the empty room, the reality of it was suddenly shoved right in front of him. Looking at Bucky’s frozen face, still and cold as death, the full weight of the last few weeks settled onto him.

 _It’s not fair_ , a small voice in his head said suddenly.

 _Well_ , he told the small voice, _no, it’s not fair, but a lot of things aren’t fair_. He could see his own face reflected in the glass, shifting gradually as he stared at the covered stump of Bucky’s arm. His eyebrows were drawn together, mouth in a firm line. He looked hard, tired. Like his mother in the last few months of her life, he thought, when she was sick but couldn't afford to rest.

 _It’s not fair_ , the small voice said again.

The glass was cold, smooth, and didn’t scratch under his nails when he curled his fingers against it. Did he want to scratch it? Yes, he did. No, he wanted to find a pickaxe and smash it to pieces. _That is my best friend_ , he thought in response to the small voice, _and it is not fair_.

The urge to break something swept over him, tight fury like he’d been electrified, and he drew his arm back, fist clenched, ready to drive right through the glass and make it right, make it fair again, make something in Bucky’s life right again, as if anything had ever been fair or right or ever would be—

He almost did it, or he told himself he almost did it. It would have felt so good, that pain, that distraction. He could have done it, would have been overjoyed at the sound of broken glass hitting the floor. In reality the rage left him in such a rush that he had to sit down in front of the cryo chamber, dizzy, and stayed there for quite a while with his head in his hands. Dimly, he hoped whoever was monitoring the room enjoyed watching Captain America sob on the floor like a toddler. The next day Shuri squeezed his arm once and then gave him a bracelet made of beads, one of which projected little smiley faces informing him of Bucky’s status. She liked to change them. Today, Bucky’s status— _excellent health, no change_ —was a winky face.

“I don’t go in there much anymore,” he told Pepper.

“It must be really difficult to have him there but not be able to talk to him,” she said.

“Sure,” he said. “But better than not having him at all.”

She touched his hand for a moment and then turned back to the thick stack of paper in front of her. “This thing is still a mess.”

“It looks a thousand times better than it did before,” he said. “You’re really good at this.”

“I had a pretty steep learning curve, but you get to be an expert at contracts and international law pretty fast when you work for Tony,” she said. “I know why he didn’t ask me to even look at it before he signed it, but I’m still surprised by Rhodey. He knows better.”

“Guilt can override common sense,” he said. “Sokovia was pretty bad. And Tony–”

“You don’t have to tell me.” Pepper shook her head and smiled at the ceiling. Anybody who knew Tony in any capacity had that look, Steve thought. There was a particular kind of exasperation and disbelief, like a teacher whose most troublesome student was also his favorite. “It’s like the moment he realizes he cares about something, it becomes the only thing. He can’t just be normal about it. He course corrects after a while, but by then it’s too late.”

 _It’s not too late_ , Steve wanted to say, but he wasn’t sure that was true. When Pepper had dialed the number Steve had given Tony in case of emergency, he almost didn’t pick up. It was only because he had promised, because it might have something to do with the Avengers, that he had done it in the end.

“I want to see if we can rewrite the Accords,” she had said. “Find some middle ground that isn’t no regulation at all, but also isn’t this pile of human rights violations.”

“Would Ross accept that?” Steve had asked.

“He might,” she said. “Especially if I can get Tony on board.”

“As long as you don’t tell him any of it came from me,” Steve said.

“Of course,” she said, but Steve knew when he was being mollified. Pepper liked him, but Pepper was also a diplomat and a pragmatist. She would find a way to get around all of them to achieve the outcome she wanted. He supposed that was another skill you had to learn when you worked for Tony Stark.

He had met her in one of the secondary safehouses Natasha had set up just after the Accords were finalized. There were some things about Natasha that were a mystery to him and some that had become predictable: Natasha would always have at least five escape plans and a dozen safehouses nobody else knew about. She trusted no one entirely, least of all him, but he thought maybe he was working his way up the ranks of her personal list. Maybe she was working her way up his list too.

“This is pleasant,” Pepper said when she met him at the shack in Durbuy. “It’s got Natasha’s touch.”

“If it had Natasha’s touch, there would be a bunch of snipers in the woods,” he said. “I think it’s just us.”

She tapped her heel on a broken floorboard that he saw would likely have snapped and sent her tumbling into the dirt cellar, as well as breaking her ankles. “Booby trap,” she had said. “ _Natasha_.”

Now that they had pushed through at least a quarter of the Accords, pulling them apart piece by piece while their breath fogged the air in the unheated shack, he wondered who had been telling her about the cryo chamber, and if it was Natasha who had put her up to the meeting in the first place. “Have you been in contact with Nat?” he asked.

“And King T’Challa,” she said. “We’ve been friendly since the beginning of the clean energy initiative. It’s been a long time since we spoke, though.”

“He had some difficulties taking over his father’s duties,” Steve said carefully. He still didn’t know everything about what had happened in Wakanda while he was on the rescue mission, but from some of the looks he caught between T’Challa and Shuri, he thought it must have been bad. He had finally extracted a promise from both of them—and, when they agreed too readily, from Okoye—that they would call him if things ever went south again and there was any way he could help. He and T’Challa kept doing a strange dance of gratitude, and he hated that there was nothing he could give back. His skills were fighting and fighting, and fighting some more, and he had realized pretty fast that that wasn’t a commodity Wakanda particularly needed.

Pepper stretched her neck one way and then the other before wrapping her blanket coat more tightly around her. “All right,” she said. “Let’s start on the next section.”

“There are a couple of beds if you want to take a break,” he said. “I figured we’d be here overnight.”

“Oh, we will,” she said. “But I’m not sleeping until this is done, and neither are you. I have a wedding dress fitting in London tomorrow afternoon.”

“All right,” he sighed. “Wait, you have a what?”

“Keep up, Steve,” she said.

*

Not all of their missions were long and difficult. Sometimes they spent a week in the south of France, swimming and sunning and then listening to Natasha complain bitterly about sunburns while tracking down an operative who had been hiding there for nearly a decade.

“Three different guys offered to put more lotion on you,” Steve said. “Three.”

“The one I was trying to get to put lotion on my back wasn’t taking the bait at all,” she said. “I couldn’t take a chance on the other three.”

“Is that what you were doing?” Sam asked. “You need to share your plans with us. I could have told you that guy wasn’t going to see you as bait. Throw Steve out and he’ll be over there with a bottle of lotion so fast he’ll leave a little dust cloud.”

“I never use lotion,” Steve said. “I don’t really burn.”

“Of course you don’t,” Natasha said in disgust, gingerly moving the strap of her sundress. Steve really felt for her; she was so bright red she was almost neon. He handed her an ice cube from his water glass and she shoved it into the front of her bra. “Don’t say a damn thing, either of you.”

“So tomorrow you can stay under the umbrella, and Steve can take his shirt off and reel him in.” Sam sat back in his chair and ate what he swore was his eighty-fifth piece of rosemary bread. He had made barely concealed gagging noises as Steve and Natasha ate their way through a platter of oysters, and called shotgun on all the bread and cheese for the entire trip. They had chosen a table outside, facing the beach while the sun went down, and now the light was almost gone. The little restaurant’s lamps had started to turn on, but for now, their table was only lit by the last bit of daylight.

Steve toyed with the kimoyo bracelet while Sam tried to decide whether they needed three smaller desserts or whether they could share two larger ones.

“Does his status ever change?” Natasha asked.

He shook his head without looking up. He had spent the entire day walking up and down the beach, listening to the waves and the rising and falling hum of conversation through the device in his ear, fed by the transmitter on his watch. He had discovered fourteen extramarital affairs, knew that Julia was going to take Aidan to therapy again because he would only poop on the top step of the front porch, and that Manon was going to find another doctor who would perform a fourth surgery even if she had to go out of the country to do it. He had also overheard far, far too many comments about his ass. There was one about his nipples, which at least broke up the monotony, though he didn’t think they resembled pencil erasers at all.

“What do the other ones do?” Sam nodded toward the bracelet.

“These only work in Wakanda,” he said, pointing to the first four. One was his identification, one his room key, one his transportation pass, and one his banking. All of their American bank accounts were frozen, though Natasha was bankrolled by a longtime financier in Hong Kong and Steve and Sam both received a regular sum as security consultants to the crown of Wakanda. “This is Bucky’s status, this is T’Challa’s, and this is the weather.”

“I guess weather apps are universal,” Sam said. He took a long sip of his Bloody Mary and sighed. “I know we’re just using this guy, but what if he does hit on you? Would you actually let the man put some damn lotion on your back?”

“That guy?” Steve asked. “The one with the guns tattooed on his biceps?”

“Okay, not that guy, but any guy. Any girl. Anyone at all.”

“I’m never going to get away from this topic,” he said. “We’re international fugitives. Right now, we’re on the lam _and_ undercover, and you two still can’t stop trying to get me a date.”

“I never met anybody who needs to relax as much as you do,” Sam said. “I didn’t think you could get strung up even tighter, but you did.”

“Being around you right now is kind of like being around a really depressed pressure cooker,” Natasha said.

Steve held up his hands. “I just said we’re international fugitives. How am I supposed to relax?”

“Steve, come on,” Natasha said. “You know this isn’t because you’re a fugitive.”

“At least not a hundred percent,” Sam said. “Because I got some stress about it. I know I do. My parents think I’m off somewhere being a traitor and my student loans aren’t getting paid. My credit is ruined. I’m tense.”

“You know it’s because of him,” Natasha said softly, tapping the bead with Bucky’s stats. _Excellent health, no change_ , it said when he smoothed a finger over it. Today’s smiley face had a little tongue sticking out.

The lamp nearest to their table flickered on, and he could see the concern on her shiny, glowing red face. “Let’s just catch some war criminals, and worry about my love life when nobody at this table is considered a terrorist anymore,” he said.

“Man, now I can’t stop thinking about compounding interest,” Sam said. “I need another drink.”

“It’s always going to be something,” Natasha said.

“Yeah, well, I can only deal with what’s in front of me,” he said. “And right now, what’s in front of me is a mission.”

*

When he was in Wakanda, he dreamed about Bucky.

That in itself wasn’t unusual. In almost all the dreams he could remember, Bucky was there with him even if he wasn’t the star of the show. He’d never thought of it as strange until he was telling Bucky about a dream he’d had in which the two of them had met President Roosevelt and he had turned out to be a mouse, and Bucky had said, “Am I always in your dreams?”

“I guess,” Steve had said. “Yeah, you’re always there with me, like real life.”

“Does dream Bucky tell you it’s been your turn to wash the dishes for a week?” Bucky had asked, and that was that.

The serum made his dreams a little more vivid, but he had always dreamed vividly. It was why he had first learned to draw, trying to get some of the weirder parts on paper. He didn’t put much stock in dream analysis. He dreamed what he dreamed and if it was weird, well, life was weirder.

But in Wakanda, things were different. The first few nights he slept in the rooms T’Challa had given him, near where the Dora Milaje were quartered, he had no dreams. It was the best sleep he had ever gotten, and he wondered if Shuri had placed some kind of dampening effect in the rooms that increased sleep quality. After he returned from the meeting with Pepper to discuss it with T’Challa and check on Bucky, he dreamed with such force that he woke after each one with a shout like he’d been shot out of a cannon. Sometimes he was looking for Bucky in the forest and sometimes he was in a field; sometimes he was in the Raft again, speaking to Sam through the bars of his cell. _Scott's going to have to retrofit it_ , Sam would say, which wasn’t what he and Sam had talked about during the rescue mission at all. _Where’s Wanda?_ Steve would ask. _Come on, Steve. Focus on the mission_ , Sam would say.

One night he dreamed he was in his quarters, sitting on a couch he didn’t own. Bucky was next to him, and he knew he should be more excited about it because he hadn’t seen Bucky even in his dreams for so long, but he was falling asleep, falling and falling down into an oblivion that was threaded through with dull dark anxiety.

“You can sleep,” Bucky said.

“I have to get things ready to go,” he said, struggling to get up. “I’m the point man for all the HYDRA missions.”

“Yeah, I know,” Bucky said, pulling a pillow into his lap, then guiding Steve back down again. “You’re the point man for everything.”

The deep, heavy tiredness tugged at every cell in his body, but he pushed against it. “I just have a lot to do,” he said.

“I know, pal. I know you do,” Bucky said. “We’ll just sleep a little while first, okay?”

He shook his head, but Bucky’s hand was on his back, rubbing through the flannel, and it dragged him down into sleep with every stroke. “Just for a little while,” he said. “Set an alarm.”

“I’ll wake you up,” Bucky said.

“Don’t let me be too late,” he mumbled. “I’m always late.”

When he opened his eyes again in the dream, it was dusk. The light outside was sepia fading into darkness, with a certain quality he remembered from childhood—good memories, the kind you cling to when it’s no longer summer, having fun with Bucky and coming home just before curfew at 7:30, the light stretched out long and his body exhausted from a day of playing.

Bucky was gone. He stood up too fast and swayed, straightened, and tried to breathe. There was nothing wrong. The silence in his quarters was normal. Bucky had probably gotten bored and left long before and he was fine, absolutely fine. There was no reason to think—but he was already rushing through his quarters looking for signs. Hall, no, bathroom, nothing, spare room, _nothing_ –

In the kitchen, Bucky leaned against the counter, peeling an orange. He looked sleepy and thoughtful, and hadn’t turned on the light, like he wanted to enjoy the encroaching evening too. Steve crowded him in, too close.

“Hi,” he said. “Uh, I thought you were gone.”

His fingers were clenched in Bucky’s shirt, and he took a deep breath and forced himself to let go and back off two steps, but Bucky set the orange down and drew him close again. “I’m right here,” he said, arms tight around him. “Not going anywhere.”

God, every part of him ached. He felt as beat up as he had after he’d fought Bucky on the carrier, gut-shot and almost drowned. Bucky’s fingers pushed expertly at the sorest spots on his back and he went limp, his forehead on Bucky’s shoulder.

“I have to get going,” he said into Bucky’s shirt. He was wearing Bucky’s clothes again, he realized. He had kept Bucky’s small stash of items in his quarters while he was in cryo, and he wore his sweatpants and long-sleeved shirts and flannels to bed every night he was in Wakanda, read the little journal Bucky had started keeping again for his sake, wrote bits and pieces down in the journal himself for the time when Bucky woke up.

“You don’t have to do anything,” Bucky said. His cheek was pressed against Steve’s temple, and his voice was low and soft. Steve found himself responding to it as surely as he had been dragged into sleep earlier. “You don’t have to be in charge of everything all the time. I’ll take care of it.”

Let Bucky take care of it. He could, if he let himself. He imagined being just Steve Rogers, without any particular responsibility, without any weight to bear, and the relief in the idea made him sag against Bucky even further. They were so close he could feel Bucky’s chest rising and falling. He’d never really thought about what it would feel like to be held by someone like this. It surprised him that he liked it. More than liked it. He wanted to fall asleep like this, wake up like this, surrounded by Bucky. He could have it—he could have it if he wanted. He could stay like this and have Bucky, have what he wanted, have this man forever.

“Steve.”

 Behind him, Tony stood in the doorway.

“We have to go.”

He pulled away from Bucky, but touched their foreheads together for a moment before he straightened. “I love it here,” he said shakily.

“Yeah, I’m sure it’s great,” Tony said. “But we gotta go. Come on, Cap, get to stepping.”

Bucky was calm and silent. It made sense that even in his dreams, Bucky wouldn’t tell him to stay when he was needed elsewhere. He squeezed Steve’s hand and nodded, nudging him toward Tony, who led him out of his quarters. The halls were empty. Where were the Dora Milaje?

“What is this place?” he asked. “It feels real.”

“It is real,” Tony said. “Mostly.”

“Then why was Bucky here with me?”

“Was he?” Tony said. “I didn’t see anyone else. I have a theory about this place, though. I think you’re the linchpin. I think you’re the one holding it all together.”

They were at the elevators, staring down into the empty, silent center of the palace.

“So what happens if I leave?” he asked.

Tony didn’t respond, and Steve turned to face him. His face was grim.

“Tony? What happens if I–”

The kimoyo bracelet vibrated against the inside of his wrist, and he jerked awake. After a moment of disorientation, he realized the vibration was coming from the bead that told him Bucky’s status. He had programmed it so it was the first thing that showed when he woke up, and although it was always _excellent health, no change_ , he found it comforting to know that he could tap it a thousand times and know how Bucky was every minute of the day if he wanted.

Now the status read _excellent health, awake_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The thing was, he was always very certain of how he felt about Bucky.

He realized, halfway through his sprint down to the cryo chamber, that perhaps it might have been a good idea to put on shoes. And real clothes. And possibly he could have brushed his teeth and looked in the mirror, but it wasn’t like Bucky hadn’t seen him looking much, much worse. Awake, he thought, awake. What did that even mean? No alerts were going off anywhere, so he had to assume it didn’t mean Bucky had had some kind of episode and escaped.

Of all the scenarios that had run through his mind, finding the cryo chamber exactly as it always was hadn’t occurred to him. Shuri looked up when he burst into the room and said, “Oh. I didn’t think you’d be sleeping. It’s only midnight.”

“What’s happening?” he asked. Bucky was still in the cryo chamber, although he noticed it wasn’t as foggy inside as usual.

“It took some time to find more of the herb I will need to help Sergeant Barnes,” she said, “but there is enough now, and I have set the chamber to awaken him slowly. I would also like to ask him a question regarding his recovery.”

“Is he going to wake up completely soon?” Steve asked. “I think maybe I shouldn’t be the first thing he sees.”

His stomach twisted. The thought of Bucky waking up and seeing him made him shiver all over like he was nervous, for some reason. It was something left over from his dream, he thought, something that was pleasant and anxious at the same time.

“He should be fully conscious in a few minutes,” Shuri said. “I programed the inside of the chamber to project the sky, so that is what he will see, not us.”

The chamber had cleared, and Bucky looked asleep rather than frozen, his skin pink now instead of gray. Steve stood with his arms crossed over his chest, biting his lips and counting to twenty over and over, until he saw Bucky’s eyes blink open. His stomach was all over the place, fluttering wildly. What was it about his dream that was making him feel like it was Christmas morning? His neck and face were hot and he was torn between busting the cryo chamber open and pulling Bucky out of it, and hiding. He scrubbed his hand over his face, trying to rid himself of the weird rubbery feeling in his limbs.

“Sergeant Barnes,” Shuri said. “Can you speak?”

“Yeah, I’m awake,” he said. “Where’s Steve?”

“Right here,” Steve said without thinking. “How are you doing?”

“I’m all right. I could use some toothpaste,” he said. He had closed his eyes, but he was smiling, and Steve’s breath stuttered.

“Sergeant Barnes, your treatment is ready. I thought you might want to spend some time outside of a laboratory,” Shuri said.

“You have—there’s a treatment?”

“Yes.” Shuri’s hands flew over her desk, tapping here, adjusting there. “I don’t know how long it will take, but I would like to begin now, if you are ready.”

Bucky was quiet for a minute or so. “Steve?” he said.

“I’m here,” he said. His voice broke, and he cleared his throat. “Do you want me to leave?”

“No, I just want to know if you’re okay with me being outside of containment.”

“Of course I am,” he said. “Buck, come on. Yes, of course.”

“All right, you can open it up,” Bucky said. “But if I start acting funny, you take me out like you promised.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, not really knowing what he was agreeing to. It took a second for him to catch up and remember he had promised to wrestle Bucky unconscious if anything bad happened. He thought, _I'm not sure I've ever fought anybody in my pajamas before_ , and then stared at his own hands in confused disgust. What was wrong with him?  

The cryo door opened with a hiss, and Bucky stayed inside stretching before he climbed out of the chamber, stiffly at first and then more confidently. Steve wiped his palms on his pants and tried to breathe. It didn’t work; the rubbery feeling in his arms and legs had spread to the rest of him and he felt wobbly, like Bucky could knock him over by tapping him on the forehead.

Bucky walked straight to him, still stretching his legs, until he and Steve were only a few feet apart. On instinct, Steve closed the distance and then stopped, confused, remembering little bits and pieces of his dream. His hands patted Bucky’s shoulders, not hugging, but Bucky pulled him close and Steve’s arms went around him automatically anyway. His skin was cool, but warmed fast against Steve’s body. He angled the left side of his body, with the remainder of the metal arm, away from Steve and rubbed his back with his right hand. With that, the entirety of Steve’s dream rushed in, as though waking had put a dam up and touching Bucky had released it. He remembered the pleasure of being held, and the desire to stay exactly in that spot forever, with Bucky taking care of him. Having what he wanted.

Having who he wanted.

He pulled away from Bucky so hard it was like he'd been hit with a cattle prod.

“Could I get some toothpaste and a toothbrush, though?” Bucky asked, turning to smile over his shoulder at Shuri. His hand still rested lightly on Steve’s arm. “A shower, maybe? I feel like I need to warn people off.”

“You know the temperature in the chamber eliminates bacteria,” Shuri said. “You shouldn’t smell any more or less than you did when you went in.”

“That’s the problem,” Bucky said. “I smelled like burnt metal when I went in.”

“We will get you anything you like,” Shuri said, softening. “Although I must tell you, the healing I have in mind for you will take you far away from other people.”

"No people?" Bucky asked. The hope in his face was hard to look at.

“I have to go,” Steve said suddenly, too loud. Shuri and Bucky stopped and looked at him. “I have—a mission. In Germany.”

“You do?” Shuri asked, but Steve was already at the door.

“I’ll be back in a week,” he said and fled, wondering, as he ran back to his quarters with at least as much haste as he had exited them, how he was going to make up a mission in Germany in the next two hours.

*

The thing was, he was always very certain of how he felt about Bucky. You couldn’t know someone almost your entire life without having a few crises along the way, but his crises were always about things like wishing he could be a little more like Bucky, who was always so easy with people, so good at everything he did, his life pleasant and without struggle. He was happy. He had family, friends, brains, looks. No money, of course, but who did? Steve would have had to be inhuman not to feel some envy—and to wonder now and again why Bucky was friends with him, deep down. Steve was difficult and stubborn, got Bucky into trouble, held him back, but Bucky always seemed to like being with him best of all. They had a good time together, but just as there was some envy on Steve’s part, he knew there was some pity on Bucky’s, and that a good part of their friendship was rooted in the fact that Bucky had it pretty good and Steve didn’t. Steve had no siblings, no cousins, no parents, no other close friends. Really, Bucky was it for him. He knew he wasn’t it for Bucky, but that was fine; he got as much of him as anyone could reasonably expect.

Once in a while, at night when Bucky was asleep in their drafty apartment and Steve was still awake, he wondered if the reason Bucky was friends with him was to feel better about himself by comparison. He hated himself for even thinking it, but it was one of those little fears you look at face to face in the middle of the night, and learn to live with during the day.

Even taking the serum hadn’t rid him of that fear; it took years afterward for that to happen. He and Bucky did intel alone in Dortmund toward the end of Operation Einfall. Nights were spent in the woods, with almost total sound and light discipline. There wasn’t much to do but huddle together and go over the morning’s plans. Neither of them slept much then. Steve remembered being kept awake for days by the medical staff who tested him after he first received the serum, and he had gone a week without any noticeable side effects, but he might have gone two or even three weeks during Einfall and it was starting to get to him.

He thought Bucky had drifted off sometime in the early morning, three or four maybe, and was glad. He never could tell how much of the change in Bucky’s face had come from the war itself or from the time spent on Zola’s table, and he knew an hour or two of sleep wasn’t going to improve anything, but it was better than nothing. They were wrapped up together under a blanket, tucked into the raised roots of a tree where they had laid out a little strip of canvas to protect them from the hard, frozen ground, and for a long time Steve sat and listened to the forest, branches crackling and the occasional owl, and watched his own breath puff in and out. Bucky was curled against him, his head resting more on Steve’s chest than his shoulder.

“Is it strange now, having everyone look at you?” Bucky asked.

Steve didn’t jump; Bucky’s voice was soft enough that it wouldn’t startle him. “Yeah,” he said. “I don’t know if I like it.”

“Everyone listens to you,” Bucky said. “It’s how it always shoulda been.”

“I don’t know about that,” Steve said. It was warm under the blanket, with the two of them giving off as much warmth as any ten guys, but he tightened it around them anyway. “I was always going off a little half-cocked before. I think more clearly now.”

He felt Bucky laughing against his chest more than he heard it. “Oh, so this you going off full-cocked? Jumping into enemy territory with no weapons?”

“I had a _plan_ ,” Steve said, but Bucky shook his head, shutting him up.

“I just mean it should always have been like this, for you,” he said. “Maybe with anybody else, getting big like that would be weird. You’d never stop looking twice, trying to figure out where the change was. I kinda thought I would keep doing that with you, but I don’t.”

“You don’t have to take any punches for me anymore, at least,” Steve said.

“I never minded,” Bucky said. “I know I always grumbled about it, but if there were more people like you, this war would be done. Hell, it never would’ve happened in the first place.”

“Like me?”

“Ready to do the right thing, no matter what,” Bucky said. His voice dropped even lower. “If I could be like you, it would be easier.”

“You always do the right thing,” Steve said. “Of course you do.”

“Not like you,” Bucky said. There was something tight in his voice, painful. “You always keep me right. It’s natural for you. I have to work at it, but you—you always guide me.”

“You’re so hard on yourself,” Steve said, grabbing his hand under the blanket and holding on.

“Not as hard as I should be,” Bucky said, squeezing his fingers briefly before sitting up and shrugging off the blanket. “I’m not going to sleep. Let’s look at the map again. I’m not too sure about our egress.”

Steve had never had the chance to talk to him about it again. There wasn’t enough time. There was never enough time. Bucky was dead only weeks after that, and then—then everything after. But just that fifteen minutes of conversation was enough to burn away the little fear he had held close to him all those years. There was a long list of things he wished he had realized before he took the serum, and he added that to it.

He supposed now he could add another thing to the list.

*

“Is everything okay?” Sam asked. “You usually give me more than five minutes’ warning.”

“Yeah, I’m good,” he said. “Bucky’s out of cryo.”

“A…ha,” Sam said. He didn’t look at Steve.

“Don’t,” Steve said. He wasn’t even sure what he was telling Sam not to do, but he hoped Sam wouldn’t do it.

“Don’t what?” Sam asked. “I barely grunted.”

“It’s the way you grunted,” Steve said.

“Yeah, it was judgmental as hell, because you’re running away.”

Ah, that was what he had hoped Sam wouldn’t do: pinpoint exactly the problem with the situation and who to blame for it.

“It’s not running away,” he said. “I need to think.”

“I guess beating up all these little Nazis is meditative,” Sam said. “What do you need to think about, anyway? Your boy’s alive, back and kicking, gonna get himself right in the head, maybe get a haircut.”

“I love him,” Steve said.

“Autopilot activated,” Sam said, and turned away from the jet’s controls. “Say that again, loud enough for me to record it so Natasha can hear. Damn, let me get my phone out.”

“Do you have a bet going or something?”

“No,” Sam said. “Man, we’re your friends. That’s a fool’s bet. Nobody who ever met you would believe you’d even think it, let alone say it out loud.”

Steve sat staring out the front of the jet, rubbing his lower lip, for so long that Sam turned the autopilot off again.

“I never thought of him like that,” he said finally. “At least not that I realized. He was just my friend.”

“Okay, but—and I’m not complaining, mind you, even though I am out here being a criminal,” Sam said, switching to autopilot again. “But you might have a little bit of an extra idea about what friendship is like, because your life is weird.”

Steve still stared unseeingly out of the jet. In the old days, being in a vehicle and staring at the passing landscape would have made him sick, and Bucky would have teased him about it even as he rubbed the back of Steve’s neck. It always came back to Bucky. There had been something there this whole time, something in his way, and he had never seen it. How had he never seen it?

“After everything he’s been through, I can’t even be a good friend to him,” he said. “He doesn’t need this. He needs me to be just the same old Steve.”

“You think you can do that?”

He shook his head. “I hope so. I don’t think I’m very good at lying.”

Sam raised his eyebrows. “Oh. Oh no. No. No. No, no. Nope.”

“All right, I get it,” Steve said.

“There’s D-list porn out there with better actors than you, and they can’t even order pizza or get their pool cleaned.”

“I _get it_ ,” Steve said, glaring. “I’m just going to have to not think about it.”

“Yeah, you work on that while we figure out why we’re in Germany,” Sam said. “And can I finally call Natasha?”

“Please don’t,” Steve said. “I can only handle one of you at a time.”

*

It was two weeks before he saw Bucky again. The only good thing about HYDRA was that they were predictable, and if you panicked and made up a mission to Germany for personal reasons the origin of which you did not want to examine at all, you were almost guaranteed to find plenty to do. He and Sam stumbled onto a plot to smuggle twenty agents into the US, and it took an additional week to get border security to catch on and think it was their own brilliant investigative work.

“Half of me doesn’t even want to give this to them,” Sam said when they received word that the agents had been apprehended. “They don’t deserve this.”

Sam looked tired and drawn in a way Steve had never seen him before. He always kept his spirits up, and Steve wondered—no, he _knew_. He knew Sam had been trying to prevent him from feeling guilty all this time, pretending harder than anyone that he was all right, that he was rolling with the punches.

“I miss home,” Steve said. The bunker they were staying in was heated, comfortable, with plenty of food and electricity and even hot water, every few days or so. It wasn’t enough.

“Me too.” Sam suddenly sprawled out on the floor, rubbing his face. “Fiji’s a dream vacation, you know? Maybe I was even going to retire there, I don’t know. I’m starting to hate it. I miss my family.”

“You could always stay in Wakanda,” Steve said.

“Nah, you were right. It’s better if the three of us are separated. None of us can lead anyone to each other on our off time.” Sam sat up again, and sighed. “I’m thinking about bringing my family to me. Tell me that’s a bad idea.”

“It really is,” Steve said, patting his shoulder. “I’m sorry. This is harder on you than me or Natasha.”

“You’re damn right is,” Sam said, but he looked a little better. “Sorry. I don’t need to be whining at you.”

“You can whine at me whenever you want,” Steve said. “God knows I’ve leaned on you enough these last few years.”

They were quiet for another few hours, listening to the radio to make sure all the loose ends were tied up. Steve drew, while Sam did a crossword puzzle.

“Natasha wants to know if you’re done having a crisis,” Sam said after a while.

“Nope,” he said, although it wasn’t entirely true. “Why can’t she just ask me?”

“You get all ‘Agent Romanov, this is neither the time nor the place,’ and you start feeling around like you’re trying to find the shield and throw it at somebody's head,” Sam said. His impression of Steve always sounded like a robot, which Steve had pointed out a number of times to no avail.

If Steve had to be honest with himself, his crisis was much less intense than he would have thought if someone had told him that someday he’d realize he was in love with Bucky. It wasn’t panic he was going through so much as a state of burrowing down and hiding. He was…sad, he thought. Pensive, but a bit happy at the same time, going over his entire life and seeing where he had missed it, not knowing what it was because it was always there like his double-jointed left thumb and his deep-seated craving for peach pie every summer. It was awful, but this love, now that he had recognized what it was, was something he wanted to wrap himself in like a blanket on a rainy day, which was not an urge he’d ever had before. He felt like he’d been wounded, but beautifully, as much as something desperate and lonely can be beautiful. There was something about it that felt a little like waking in the hospital after Bucky had nearly killed him and then dragged him from the Potomac: everything hurt, but he was alive.  _If you fall in love with everyone who shoots you, things are going to get out of hand_ , he told himself with a sigh. It was all pretty embarrassing, and he didn’t want to admit that what he was doing was brooding, but it wasn’t as embarrassing as the dreams.

He shifted uncomfortably, trying not to think about the dreams, though he looked down at what he’d been working on and realized there was something weirdly suggestive about the jet he was drawing. He crumpled up the paper fast and threw it into the trash, then told Sam he was going to empty it and try to clean the place up a bit.

It wasn’t like he didn’t think about sex. True, he didn’t think about it often because he was busy, but it had occurred to him now and then that eventually, someday, when he wasn’t busy, he might find someone who wanted to touch him. Kissing Sharon had seemed promising, but—and he wasn’t sure exactly what this meant, but it couldn’t be good—they hadn’t contacted each other at all since. _How’s your CIA lady?_ Sam had asked the first time they met up again after Steve rescued him from the Raft and got him settled in the Fiji safe house, and he was genuinely confused. _Right_ , he said after a minute. _You know, I don’t think that’s going to work out. I think I’d be kind of a black mark on her file_.

He hadn’t fantasized about anything more than that kiss with Sharon, because even in his private thoughts, it felt strange to involve other people who might not want to be there, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want more. When he touched himself—and he did it every day because he couldn't go without it, contrary to what Sam seemed to believe, if his more or less constant inquiries about Steve exploding like the Fourth of July if he ever went on a date again were anything to go by—he never thought of a person. It just felt disrespectful. He focused on how good it felt, and he had never needed much of an imagination to get off fast and hard and good. Even his subconscious thought it wasn’t that interesting; he couldn’t remember ever having sex dreams as a teenager.

Or maybe, as he was starting to suspect, his subconscious had just stayed away from the topic because it was waiting for the perfect moment to make things worse.

“Hey, space cadet,” Sam said, and he jumped and tried to pretend he hadn’t spent five minutes staring at the bunker wall, thinking about his endless succession of dreams about being held down and having his brains fucked out.

*

“It’s all right,” Bucky said. His fingers were light, soft, tracing lines on the backs of Steve’s thighs. “Let me make you feel good.”

Steve pressed his face into the pillow and pushed back against Bucky’s hands, wanting more, not knowing what it meant to have more. He didn’t want it to end—Bucky’s fingers spread pleasure all the way down to his toes, warmth over his thighs, his balls—but he wanted to get fucked. More than anything, he wanted to get fucked. _Please, please, I need it_ , he moaned, out of breath and desperate for it, his eyes rolling back. And with that, he was being spread open, by Bucky’s fingers or his cock, he had no idea, and he was right, it was already spilling through him in powerful waves that made him choke and cry into the pillow, writhing—he was coming, once, twice, three times, and it kept happening again and again because Bucky wouldn’t let up. He just pressed him down harder against the mattress, tight against his ass, short hard movements that kept him coming into the blankets under him. Bucky’s hands pinned him to the bed, not allowing him to move even an inch, but stroking gently with his thumbs along the thin, sensitive skin of Steve’s wrists.

“ _Steve_ ,” Bucky murmured against his neck. He had heard Bucky say his name that way a thousand times, soft and happy. Bucky’s arms were tight around him for a moment and then suddenly they were on the train.

They ended up on the train a lot in Steve’s dreams.

“When you go back, you can’t try to change anything,” Bucky said, pulling Steve’s hand to his lips and kissing the knuckles. He was in the same thing Steve had seen in him in last: jeans, one of Steve’s tank tops, his left arm hidden in the shadows. “You’re gonna want to change it, but you can’t. Just grab the Tesseract.”

“The Tesseract is on Asgard,” Steve said. Bucky kissed his palm and then his wrist, where Bucky’s name was written in neat black letters, burned into his skin.

“Pay attention, sweetheart,” Bucky said, with the tired, sweet smile that always made Steve want to give him everything. “Just grab it and go. Don’t stick around, okay?”

He was beginning to fade, as he always did just before Steve woke up, slipping through the side of the train where he had fallen.

“Stay here. God, please, _please_ , just stay with me,” Steve said, rushing to catch him, reaching for him and missing—always missing, always too late, his fingers coming away with nothing more than dust.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now, thinking about the only bed, the only place to sleep in Bucky’s hut, Steve briefly regretted all of his existence, which sometimes seemed like a continual series of jokes he unwittingly played on himself. _Why_ , he asked past Steve, _why are you like this_?

He returned to Wakanda on a rainy night. The smell of the earth in Wakanda when it rained was something that always got to him, especially after he had been trapped in a city for a while. His life had come to be separated into two worlds with two entirely different sets of emotions, colors, senses. There was work, the never ending fight, which was dark and drab, efficient, satisfying in many ways but always external. This was Captain America’s work, and now that Captain America was gone it was Steve Rogers’s work, but it didn’t come from him, wasn’t inside of him. It was useful, but nothing grew organically from it. On the other hand, his life in Wakanda, as minimal as it had been, was bright and lovely and grew from somewhere inside him. It made him nervous to think about it, actually. He wasn’t the kind of person who looked inward very often. Part of the feeling came from knowing Bucky was there and that Bucky had always carried his heart with him, but part of it came from Wakanda itself, which simply didn’t allow him to hold onto any of his old, outworn shields.

He went to Shuri first, even though he knew Bucky wasn’t with her. Messing with the beads on his wrist the entire time he was away had finally led her to contact him with an alarming hologram at three in the morning, saying, “Would you like to talk to Sergeant Barnes rather than interrupting me every five minutes?” He couldn’t see her feet but had a feeling she was tapping one of them, and had apologized, trying instead to keep his fiddling to just the bead that showed him Bucky’s health.

“Good to see you again, Captain,” Shuri said when he entered the lab behind her. There was something low and rhythmic and French playing while she worked. 

“Do you sleep?” he asked.

“When I remember,” she said.

“How’s he doing?”

“Well enough,” she said. “You should ask him. He is staying near the Border Tribes.”

Steve had passed over the land where the Border Tribes lived, and tried to imagine Bucky there. It wasn’t hard, for some reason, although the idea of him going near nature made him smile. Bucky was a city boy through and through. When the Barnes family made the occasional trip upstate to his great-aunt’s farm, he always came back swearing he’d never go again. _I was itchy the entire time. And a cow spit on me, Steve. A fucking cow_ , he’d say. He didn’t complain about their living conditions during the war, at least no more than anyone else, but once in a while he’d glare at the woods around them with utter disgust that wasn’t lessened by the fact that his hay fever seemed to have disappeared forever.

“While he was healing,” Shuri said, “I built him another arm. Better than the last one—whoever made that one thought only about function, and it must have given him a lot of pain. He has decided to go without it.”

“I’m not surprised,” Steve said. “It’s a weapon to him, I think, even if that’s not what you mean it to be.”

“He says the same thing.” She shrugged. “If there is a need for him to fight, he will use the arm, but only for Wakanda, or for you.”

Steve looked down at his feet, going hot all over. “Um,” he said.

“That one, he likes to learn,” she said, turning back to her work station. “Some men, even the ones who ask questions instead of thinking they know everything, they don’t listen to the answer. He does. He wants to know about the suit, how the nanotechnology works, the history of the vibranium, irrigation techniques.”

“That’s Bucky all over,” Steve said, blinking hard. He walked away from her for a minute, pretending to examine a necklace that was suspended in the air while he wiped his eyes. “He’s good at everything. He likes to figure out how to do things well.”

“If you could convince him to wear the arm for a while so that I can make adjustments, I can explain it to him,” Shuri said. “The two of you are so alike, you know? You both pretend you’re not crying when you talk about each other.”

“Give a man a little false dignity, will you?” Steve said, and left her laughing at him.

*

He waited until midmorning to take the transport out to see Bucky. It had hit him, when he looked out at the light streaking across the sky at dawn, that he had no idea if Bucky was still a morning person or not. It was something they had always shared, waking early, quietly, though Bucky was much more cheerful about it than Steve was until after the serum. He was amazed to realize how much not being sick with something every second of the day improved his disposition, which Bucky pointed out the first time they woke up and Steve didn’t groan and tell him to _shut up, please, Buck, we all know it’s morning time_.

The transport dropped him off beside a little hut and waited to leave until Bucky waved to him from the foot of the hill. How did it know to do that? he wondered, and vowed to ask Shuri later.

“Hey,” he called out, his stomach rolling over. For a little while, enjoying the ride through the Wakandan landscape, he had forgotten there was anything to be nervous about, but he could only just see the outline of Bucky moving up the hill toward him and he was already sweating, even though this part of the country wasn’t hot.

“You don’t want to come down and meet the livestock?” Bucky said when he had reached Steve at the top of the hill.

“Shuri said they only like you,” Steve said. “And they bite.”

 “They don’t really like me. I feed them and they still don’t give a shit if I live or die,” Bucky said. “I appreciate that. It’s nice.”

“I missed you,” Steve blurted out. “I wish I could have come back earlier.”

“I missed you too, pal,” Bucky murmured, reaching for him. “Come here.”

Steve gingerly put his arms around Bucky, trying to remember how he had hugged him before so he could do it again. He smelled like fresh air and grass, and Steve wanted to bury his face in his shoulder and stay there. Not a new feeling. This was old. Surrounded by Bucky’s warmth, slow and peaceful, he was drawn into it like he was falling. Had he wanted that all this time? He must have. He must have loved it, not knowing it for what it was, only knowing that being with him, being touched by him, was one of the best feelings in the world. He sighed into the soft fabric Bucky had tied around his upper half to cover his left arm, but when Bucky patted him on the back, he tensed up again and snapped back from the embrace.

“You seem like, uh,” he choked out, his hands on his hips, trying to shake off the drowsy happiness. “You’re better.”

“Yeah, I’m doing all right,” Bucky said, running a finger along Steve’s jaw. “What’s all this?”

“Just thought I’d try out a new look,” he said. He could feel heat creeping into his face and hoped the beard covered it.

“This too,” Bucky said, touching the ends of Steve’s hair. He tugged on it, smiling his slow smile, full of affection. “You always hated having your hair too long.”

He had a sudden vision of Bucky’s fingers in his hair, pulling, and bit his lower lip hard so it wouldn’t tremble. “Well, I missed the '60s,” he said shakily.

“The kids in the village like to braid flowers into my hair,” Bucky said, “so I feel like I got the experience.”

Bucky turned to look at the hut, and Steve took the opportunity to close his eyes and give himself a small pep talk. _Be normal. You can do this. Just be the way you were before_ , he told himself. The problem was, he was being exactly the way he was before, only now he knew why he had been that way. _Get it together_ , he thought darkly, and then flinched when Bucky put his hand on his lower back to guide him.

“You all right?” he asked.

“I’m…” he began. Bucky was rubbing his back soothingly, giving him that same smile, the one he loved the most. Goose bumps rose on his arms. “I have to go on another mission,” he blurted out.

“Already? Can’t you rest for a little while?” Bucky asked. “What am I saying? Of course you can’t. How long can you stay?”

It would look weird if he left right away. He wanted to leave right away. Could the transport read his mind? _Come back, come back_ , he thought desperately.

“Until tomorrow,” he said. Sam was going to kill him. Maybe Nat needed something to do. Or Wanda. It wasn’t like she and Vision had other things on their minds. Christ, he was actually getting hard just from Bucky rubbing his back. He pulled away fast. “I don’t want to take you away from your…farming?”

Bucky gave him a smile that was half proud, half embarrassed. “I guess that’s what it is, yeah. Homesteading, maybe? I learned how to make cheese. I helped build this.”

He waved at the hut, which looked the same as the other huts Steve had seen along the way there. They were unimposing from the outside, but he had learned to expect that the more simple something in Wakanda looked, the more advanced it probably was. He liked that. No need to be flashy, though he would admit that in the past he had liked some flash now and then.

“I have to give you access to my house and the land,” Bucky said, grabbing Steve’s wrist and holding the kimoyo beads up to his own. “That way, if I’m not here, the transport can drop you off without asking my permission.”

He touched their linked beads to the door, prompting a crackling purple field to light up around the hut and then die down again.

“Say your name,” he said. “It’s voice activated too.”

“Steve Rogers," Steve said, and the purple field lit up again.

“I modified the system for that and then Shuri found out,” Bucky said with a grin. “She was pissed because she already had it voice activated and I fucked it all up. We came to an agreement about security measures.”

“Oh yeah? What’s the agreement?” Steve asked. “You stop breaking things and do what she wants?”

“I stop breaking things and do what she wants,” Bucky said. “But if I think of something, I tell her and she makes it for me and shows me how to install it.”

“She knows you like to do it yourself,” Steve said.

“She knows I _have_ to do it myself.” Bucky gave Steve a look he understood—a weird little grimacing smile that was apologetic but uncompromising. Whatever need he had, he didn’t exactly like it, but he had accepted it and Steve had better roll with it too.

“Well,” Steve said. “Show me around. Do the goats stay inside with you?”

“If you’re not careful, I’ll make you sleep outside with them. You haven’t smelled anything until you’ve smelled a goat fart.”

The inside of the hut was so like Bucky that Steve could only watch and smile like an idiot as Bucky moved through the room and pointed out various things— _the bathroom is there, I cook here, Shuri made this_. The little apartment in Bucharest was more like a bunker, but there were touches of him there too—so tidy in some ways and so messy in others, dishes piled in the sink, bed unmade, but everything in its place. He had always been the type of person who would set something down and then cease to see it, but he set it down in the same place every time. It drove Steve nuts when they lived together, a cluster of dirty cups always next to the sink or a pile of clean clothes that never left the chair, and he could see that that, at least, hadn’t changed. 

There was comfort here, though, and that really had changed. The bed on the far side of the room had sheets and blankets on it, not just a sleeping bag. The stove, which was also apparently voice activated, and the sink, which somehow acted as a dishwashing machine, were clean and well used, and when Bucky tapped a button to reveal that the wall behind the sink was actually a series of refrigerated shelving, Steve saw there was plenty of food there that wasn’t just energy bars.

“You’re staying here tonight, right?” Bucky asked.

“Yeah,” Steve said, exactly one second before he realized his mistake.

“Good, I’ve got a stew going. You can help me make bread later. It’s kind of hard to knead with one hand,” Bucky said, and headed toward the door. “Come meet the family and tell me what the hell you’ve been doing.”

Steve set down his bag and gave the inside of the hut one last desperate look before he followed Bucky outside.

*

Getting out of Siberia and taking care of Bucky had driven him nonstop for several days after T’Challa secreted them away in Wakanda on the way to deliver Zemo to Ross. Bucky slept, or at least was unconscious, for most of the way there. Steve used one of the first aid kits in the jet to clean the blood from his face, examined the damage to his arm until Bucky batted his hands away and told him to leave it, and let Bucky rest against him while he sat staring at the floor of the jet and thought through his next moves. At the palace, while the medical team worked on Bucky, the Queen visited and helped make his decisions for him.

“I understand you prevented my son from making a terrible mistake,” she said. She was dressed in formal white, and he knew how deeply in mourning she must be, but she helped the medical team as she spoke, straightening a bed here and cleaning a counter there. He understood the need to keep moving, not to think, but no one looked at her like she was out of place and he thought she must be one of those people, like his own mother, who was always there to help.

“No, your majesty,” Steve said. “He did that on his own. We were just there.”

She smiled. “You have helped him to see more clearly,” she said. “His father would thank you. I thank you.”

“We don’t want to trespass on your hospitality,” Steve said. “If we can just get him patched up, we’ll be out of your hair.”

He’d go to the Fiji safehouse first, he decided. Bucky could recover there comfortably, quietly, while Steve figured out how to contact Natasha and get everyone else out of prison.

“You may leave, of course, if you wish, but we would like you to stay,” the Queen said. “There are rooms for you. Rest here, please.”

“We couldn’t–” he began.

“You could,” she said, squeezing his shoulder before she moved to leave. “You should.”

It had been a long time since someone had told him what to do and actually made him do it when he had no intention of complying, but he found himself nodding. “Thank you,” he said.

She inclined her head toward Bucky, who held onto Steve’s hand so tight it was a constant throbbing ache while a medic carefully cleaned the debris from his side and the ruined metal. “My daughter will be very excited to meet you.”

Steve stayed awake while Bucky was examined, slept, was examined again, slept again.

“You look terrible,” he said when he woke and Steve was still there beside him. “Go rest somewhere.”

“I don’t think I can,” Steve said. “I’ll sleep when you’re done here.”

“And shower,” Bucky added, closing his eyes and smiling. “For everyone’s sake.”

“Oh, shut it,” he said. “You smell worse than I do.”

They were quiet for a while, listening to the bustle of the medical staff.

“Why?” Bucky asked eventually.

Steve couldn’t pretend not to know what he was asking, although he wanted to. He wanted to pretend hard enough so he never had to talk about it again. “If you think,” he said, “that I’m not sticking by your side closer than your shadow, you’re really stupid.”

“No, that’s you.” Bucky shook his head. “This isn’t like Azzano, Steve. You can’t rescue me from this, and you can’t fix it.”

“I’m gonna do whatever has to be done,” Steve said.

“What has to be done is that you shoulda killed me,” Bucky said. “You know that, but you can’t do it.”

“You don’t want to die, or you’d have done it already.”

“No, I don’t,” he said, shifting on the bed with a wince. He was healing already; they both looked like they had been in a fight two weeks before instead of two days. “But just because I don’t wanna die doesn’t mean I shouldn’t.”

“Hey,” Steve said sharply, grabbing his hand again and squeezing just as tight as Bucky had done. “Not an option, pal. Ever.”

Bucky stared at him, his chin set in that particular way that Steve knew so well, the one that meant he was trying not to cry. If there was ever a time that that look didn’t make Steve feel like his heart was being ripped out, it certainly wasn’t now. “You’ll regret it,” Bucky said. “I stayed away for a reason.”

“You let me catch you for a reason too,” Steve said, and then he did cry, silently, looking away from Steve. That had changed too. He'd always been quick to go off, but noisy about it, gulping and wiping his eyes like a kid. Steve held his hand tight and rubbed a thumb over his knuckles. After a while, one of the doctors showed up to check him for internal bleeding and gave Steve a look of deep disappointment for upsetting her patient.

The rooms they were given after Bucky was released had not just one but three beds, but Steve climbed in next to Bucky.

“You could just handcuff yourself to me,” Bucky said dryly, rolling over to face him. “I’m not gonna run away. Where would I go?”

“Anywhere,” Steve said. “Don’t pretend you couldn’t disappear in a minute flat. I’m not trying to keep an eye on you, though. I just…”

“You just?” Bucky said after Steve was quiet for a minute. Steve had dug through the stuff he’d thought to bring with him on the way to Siberia and found a couple of pairs of sweats for both of them, so they were at least out of the disgusting clothes they had arrived in, but he knew he still looked like hell. He wanted to take a shower even more than he wanted to sleep, but he couldn’t make himself do it. The effort of physically dragging himself into the shower, turning it on, scrubbing himself down, toweling, all the while he only wanted to be next to Bucky, was too much.

“We used to sleep like this a lot,” he said finally. “Do you remember?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “I probably spent more nights next to you than alone.”

“That’s why.” Steve shook his head, embarrassed. “I don’t know if I ever got a good night’s sleep without you.”

Bucky made a skeptical noise. “There’s a lot of people who would have climbed into bed with you. Every person in America, probably.”

“Don’t know,” Steve said. “Never tried.”

“Never?” Bucky asked, sounding a little strange, but before Steve could respond, he said, “I don’t know how I’m gonna react. It could get bad.”

“If it does,” Steve said, yawning, already sliding down into sleep, “I’ll be right here to take care of it.”

“All right.” Bucky’s voice was unsteady, but he reached out and grabbed Steve’s hand. “All right. Promise me you’ll take me out if it goes sideways, okay? Promise.”

“Promise. Night. Shush,” Steve mumbled, pulling his hand free and patting Bucky with it to make him stop talking. Bucky rolled over again and Steve slept without dreaming, waking with his forehead resting against Bucky’s shoulder blade.

Now, thinking about the only bed, the only place to sleep in Bucky’s hut, Steve briefly regretted all of his existence, which sometimes seemed like a continual series of jokes he unwittingly played on himself. _Why_ , he asked past Steve, _why are you like this_?

“Come on, Brooklyn boy,” Bucky said. “I’ve got some goat asses to stick a thermometer in.”

*

Steve did not want to learn about goats. Not that it wasn’t pleasant to be outside telling Bucky how his last few weeks had gone, carefully skirting around the major topic of conversation between him and Sam, but it took him hours to get through it because every few minutes they were interrupted by a goat breaking free and trying its hardest to kill them, and nearly succeeding.

“I usually have five or six of the older kids in the village come help me with the worming and trimming,” Bucky said when they had subdued what Steve would swear was the same damn goat for the eightieth time. “They’re gonna be so upset that I got a different assistant.”

“Yeah, what an honor,” Steve gasped. He wished he were wearing his tactical suit, which would at least protect his balls.

“I give them ice cream afterward,” Bucky said. “Don’t you want ice cream?”

“Is it goat ice cream?” Steve asked.

The goat kicked itself free again and Bucky muttered, “Goddammit,” and went after it.

“Is it though?” Steve asked, throwing himself bodily onto the wrong goat. “Is it goat ice cream? Buck?”

*

It was mid-afternoon before they finished, and Steve limped into the bathroom to shower, itching all over from the grass. He had no idea what to expect, but wasn’t entirely surprised when it was a smaller version of the bathrooms in the palace.

“You can ask for the kind of water pressure and heat you want,” Bucky told him before he went in. “There’s a setting that kind of pummels your back. It feels nice after you’ve gotten your ass kicked by goats all day.”

“I did not have my ass kicked,” Steve said doggedly, though he did think his nose was broken. “I won.”

“You’re two for fifty,” Bucky said.

“Are you saying we only actually got that thing inside _two_ goat asses?” he asked.

“Steve, I’m starting to get the feeling you don’t appreciate the majesty of nature,” Bucky said, and Steve shut the bathroom door in his face.

*

“We could go to the caves tonight, if you want,” Bucky said. “About two miles from here, there’s an underground hot spring. I usually go pretty late so I can be alone.”

Working outside, and then making bread, had distracted Steve from some of his more embarrassing thoughts, but he thought of himself alone with Bucky, in the water, and his breath caught. “I,” he began, and imagined Bucky wet and relaxed, legs slipping against his in the water. He fumbled with the butter knife and dropped it, catching it before it hit the floor.

“Or not,” Bucky said smoothly. “We can just stay here and relax.”

“Okay,” he said, trying to smile. “Yeah, I’d rather do that.”

But it was hardly better alone in the hut. After dinner, Bucky set one of his kimoyo beads down on a table and tapped it so a projection appeared on the wall, then shoved the bed around until it folded into a couch. “What do you want to watch?” he asked. “Did someone make you watch Star Trek yet? The village kids think it’s stupid, but I kinda like it.”

“Sam made me watch the new movies, but I think I lost some of the context because I never saw the old ones,” Steve admitted.

“Play old Star Trek movies?” Bucky asked the kimoyo ball uncertainly, and a movie started. Which one it was, Steve could not tell, not only because he lacked so many decades of cultural osmosis but because as soon as the opening credits rolled, Bucky sprawled across the bed-turned-couch with his feet in Steve’s lap. _Be normal_ , he told himself for the hundredth time that day. What had normal Steve done in the past? When they were younger, he would have shoved Bucky’s feet off of him and claimed that they smelled. Steve from three months ago would have been elated that Bucky was so comfortable with him, that he was able to poke Steve in the stomach with his toes, a little smile on his face like he knew he was being obnoxious and also knew Steve liked it, in such a Bucky Barnes way that Steve felt a huge wave of happiness sweep through him.

Steve from right now wanted to kiss Bucky’s thighs. He couldn’t stop staring at the long muscles, the soft skin, wondering how his beard would feel against it. Lightheaded, he put his hand on the top of Bucky’s foot and patted it gently. When he stopped, Bucky waggled his foot until he started again, and then he gave a little pleased sigh.

“That feels great,” he said, and so Steve traced lines up and down his skin, traced the alphabet and numbers and the alphabet again, forward and backward, traced both their names over and over until he sneaked a look and saw Bucky was asleep, his face turned toward the movie, right hand resting on his stomach. It was Steve who had always fallen asleep ten minutes into a radio show or Bucky reading to him, and Bucky hated that—he always listened so avidly and wanted Steve to be equally invested, could never understand how Steve’s attention could wander or how he could be so tired that the sound of Bucky’s voice was too soothing to stay awake. Steve stared for a few minutes, rubbing his thumb along the line of Bucky’s ankle, taking in his long legs, his blue sleep shorts and old soft Air Force Academy t-shirt that had both, at some point, belonged to Sam before Steve had stolen them. He didn’t look innocent in sleep and probably never would again, but he looked calm. Steve’s chest hurt just watching him, all the things contained in this one man. He saw himself crawling into Bucky’s embrace and sleeping there with his head on his chest and wanted, vaguely, to run out of the hut and scream.

Instead, he moved Bucky’s feet from his lap and tapped the kimoyo bead, whispering, “Turn off the movie,” grabbed a blanket from the couch, and curled up on the floor to sleep.

Bucky woke him before dawn with a little shake. “Hey,” he said, rubbing Steve’s arm. “I can’t believe you slept on the floor. You want coffee?”

“Couldn’t take the smell of your feet,” he mumbled, first curling into Bucky’s touch and then pulling away with a twitch when he woke completely.

Bucky made them an enormous breakfast and tucked into it with gusto, not talking until he was done with his eggs and two bowls of oats with honey. It reminded Steve of mornings in Brooklyn, the quiet blue dawn in which they ate their food and drank whatever coffee they could afford, comfortably silent with each other while each of them prepared for the day ahead.

“It’s not like it does anything to wake me up anymore,” Bucky said when he ground the coffee. “I just like the taste.”

“I still can’t handle it without sugar,” Steve said.

Bucky laughed, holding up a little tin. “Yeah, I remember. This is all you, buddy.”

“You got it for me?” Steve asked.

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “I figured you’d show up sometime and I’d end up making your usual mountain of sugar with a little bean water on top.”

“That’s,” he began, and had to clear his throat. “That’s really nice. Thanks, Buck.”

Bucky reached across the table to pat his hand, and Steve jumped and shook him off.

“I, uh, I already called for the transport to come out,” he said, carrying his dishes to the sink and sliding them into the little slots where they would be sprayed first with soap and then hot water.

“What, you didn’t want to spend another day worming?” Bucky asked. “The goats won. You’re weak, Steve.”

“Pretty damn weak, yeah,” he said.

*

“Don’t talk to me,” Sam said when Steve met him in Moroni that night. “I mean it, man, don’t even look at me.”

*

In February, he said, “Sorry, I can’t stay long. There’s some kind of cell forming in Alabama.”

“All right. Tell Wilson to go fuck himself for me,” Bucky said cheerfully.

*

“I’m off again tonight,” he said in March. “Alabama again. Still.”

*

“I have to leave again this afternoon,” he said in June. “Sneaking into a white nationalist rally in DC.”

“Wait, what?” Bucky asked. “What the hell is going on in the US?”

“Yeah,” Steve sighed. “Yeah.”

*

In July, he walked with Bucky to the farthest part of the village, where he had spent his time healing and Shuri had helped remove the trigger words from wherever they rested like poison in his subconscious. There was a group of kids who greeted him there, vying to ask him questions and hold his hands and examine his pockets, which Steve was surprised to see were full of candy. He had made little bags of toffee for all of them and instructed them to bring a bag to Ochienga, who was often sick and couldn’t come out to see him.

They were shy with Steve, except one very small boy who held onto Steve’s pinky as they walked, not seeming to know or care who he was other than that he was an adult who provided balance. Bucky had introduced him, but their interest lay in Bucky’s goats and in what he would bring them the next time he came to the village, and in explaining in breathless detail which of them was now the fastest. Steve had never learned to be good with kids, especially not kids who liked to talk, and despite growing up with three sisters, Bucky had never seemed very good with them either, but they didn’t seem to mind. They had no fear of him, and only giggled when they threw candy at each other and he exclaimed, “What the hell? It took me hours to make that for you. You better dust it off and eat it.”

After the kids ran off to play, Bucky brought him to the tiny hut by the water where he had spent so much time resting. The reeds were tall at the edges of the lake and Steve thought there would be a lot of mud there, but the sun was high and he wanted to dive in anyway.

He opened his mouth to ask Bucky if he wanted to go for a swim.

“Let me guess, you have to leave again,” Bucky said. “Tomorrow. Tonight?”

“Uh, I do, actually,” Steve said, feeling stupid. “South America, I think.”

Bucky stared out at the water, his jaw clenching.

“You don’t have to come back here, you know,” he said, eyes flat. “If you don’t want to. If this is a chore for you, I don’t want to hold you here.”

“A chore?” Steve said. “Bucky, no.”

“Because I’m doing fine,” Bucky said. “I don’t need you.”

“You don’t?” The words came out sounding small and lost. His face turned red the second he said it, knowing he must look as gutted as he felt, but Bucky wasn’t looking at him anyway. He took a long, deep shuddering breath, and was able to shrug the feeling off enough to say firmly, “Yeah, of course you don’t. I know you’re doing fine.”

He was still for a few moments, mind racing through the logistics of leaving. A ride to the palace. A call to—no, not Sam. Sam needed down time. He could touch base with Wanda and Vision. It had been a few months. Or he could do it alone. He’d go to Argentina. There was a lot he could do there. He could be gone for a long time. Maybe he would even stay there.

“All right,” he said after another long breath, turning to walk the two miles back to Bucky’s hut. “I’ll get the transport out here.”

“Steve,” Bucky said, grabbing his arm. “You don’t have to—I’m not kicking you out.”

“No, I’ll, uh.” He jerked a thumb in the general direction of the palace. “You know, I still have a room there, so I can leave you alone.”

“I don’t want you to leave me alone,” Bucky said.

But Steve, feeling like he’d been kicked in the chest by one of the damn goats, or the entire herd, was already trudging toward the hut, tapping the bead that would arrange for a hovercraft to come get him before he contacted Sam.

*

“No,” Sam said. Behind him, the beach was clean and bright. He wore only a pair of neon yellow swimming shorts and sunglasses. A pale beer sat on the table next to him with condensation puddling under it.

“You don’t have to come with me. I’m just telling you where I’m going in case you want to,” Steve said.

“No,” Sam said again, pointing at him. “No, you stay there. It has been _one day_.”

“Sam,” he began, hurt.

“Don’t give me that. And don’t you even think about trying to drag Natasha into your denial missions. I’m calling everybody. We’re all on vacation. I’m _tired_. We've been playing fascist whack-a-mole nonstop for eight months.”

Steve ducked his head and begged him silently to understand.  

“ _No_ ,” Sam said again. “You _work this out_ , Steve. Say words. Sleep more than two hours at a time. Get a hug. _Stop running_.”

And with that, Sam hung up on him. Sam was not a hanger upper by nature, which meant Steve had really pushed it this time. Just as he was wondering what he would have to do to fix that particular situation, his phone lit up. Unknown number.

_sam told me to tell you to say words_

_actually he said_

_SAY_

_WORDS_

_STEVE_

_you know I agree with him_

_srsly I’ll find a way to make you the guest of honor at a formal wakandan function if you run away this time_

He texted back, thumbs jabbing the phone, _Pot, stop lecturing the kettle._

 _benefit from my experience_ , she replied. _you want to be like me? I know you don’t_

He didn’t respond, biting his lips and staring at the floor furiously. After a few minutes she texted again, _it’s not like you have to confess your undying love. just tell him you’re having a rough time. it’s true, isn’t it?_

He pinched the bridge of his nose and told himself he wasn’t going to cry just because Natasha was right. She was right a lot. There was no reason to be upset about it.

The door to the hut opened just as he was wondering how serious she was about her threats—pretty serious, he decided; he had never known her not to follow through, not even during the Great Asgardian Lap Dance Incident of 2014, which he and Thor still refused to talk about—and Bucky approached him like he was a goat who needed to be caught, weighing how skittish he was. Steve sighed and deleted Natasha’s texts.

“It looks like I’m gonna have to stay here for the night, at least,” Steve said.

“I already said I’m not kicking you out,” Bucky said, pulling off his shirt and changing into his work clothes. He didn’t even look at Steve when he headed outside, his face hard and sullen, and Steve couldn’t find anything to say either. _I don’t need you_ was right there between them, shoving him away. It was almost like Steve had known it was coming—no, of course he had. It was what, eight months since he’d gotten the message that Bucky was awake? And he had spent no more than a week total with him since then, twelve hours here, six hours there. He could tease him, tell him funny stories about his missions, but the couple of times Bucky had begun to ask him how he was really doing, or started to say, _You remember when you asked why I pulled you out of the river?_ Steve cut him off fast. _You don’t need to explain yourself. I’m fine. We’re good. Don’t worry about it, Buck_.

Steve sat at the table in the kitchen for a while with his head in his hands, but eventually he realized Bucky would probably come back in, and he didn’t think he could face him without really breaking down one way or another. Just as he decided to head outside, he saw the transport he had forgotten to cancel arriving, and it made up his mind.

“I don’t need to go to the palace,” he said, hopping on. “Take me about thirty miles east, please.”

He wasn’t sure the hovercraft understood what he wanted, but after a few minutes he realized they weren’t heading toward the palace, and relaxed as he passed over the forest, a few rivers, and arrived at a small clearing that he supposed was exactly thirty miles east of Bucky’s hut. It was a few weeks since he’d gone for a run, and then it was only a few miles with Natasha along a fork of the Grand River at three in the morning.

“Uh, thanks?” he said to the transport hovercraft with a little wave, and it took off. He took the bead that Bucky had used to give him access to his land and asked it to point the way home, and began to run. It tried to guide him along paths in the woods, suggesting a route that would take him to bridges over the water, but he refused, letting the thick forest slap at him, falling a few times when the brush gave out under him and he rolled downhill. It wasn’t until he had swum through one river that he gave in and followed an easier path. Oh, it felt good to move, to push and push and push at his body, not to think at all beyond figuring out where to put his foot next.

It didn’t take him as long as he had hoped it would, especially since the last ten miles or so were over open terrain, but it was still nearing dark by the time he jogged up to the door of Bucky’s hut and, after a moment of hesitation, went in.

Bucky was at the sink, putting his dishes into it, his back to the door. He was in just a pair of shorts, and the sight of him in the light with the sky darkening outside made Steve feel suddenly so lonely he couldn’t breathe. Nothing, not even the solo mission he had done in Saskatchewan in the spring, had made him feel as absolutely alone as watching Bucky in the dying twilight and knowing they were strangers now, that he had made them that way.

“There’s food,” Bucky said coolly without turning around, waving at the table. Steve showered first, leaning his head against the tile and trying to breathe in and out like a normal person, not to punch out the window and run away again. The ache in his chest had only grown deeper and spread out. It wasn’t like he’d been kicked, he decided. It was like Bucky had taken a knife and carved him up in his thorough, meticulous way. _No_ , he told himself viciously, _not Bucky. You. You did this_. This was his own bullet coming back around again to hit him, and if he felt like he'd been eviscerated, he didn't have anyone else to blame.

Bucky was gone when he came out of the shower, and he sat down and ate fast, barely tasting the heavy, spiced vegetable and lentil soup, the salty goat cheese, the bread. Afterward, he got into bed, curling up on the far side as he had done the handful of times he couldn’t get out of sleeping next to Bucky. There wasn’t much else to do. He couldn’t imagine sleeping, but neither could he imagine being up and awake when Bucky returned. He didn’t want to talk to Sam or Natasha. Reading a book or watching a movie was out of the question. The silence in the hut was very thick. He could hear the animals outside, rustling and bleating from the goats, a bird or two shrieking in the night. Listening for Bucky’s footsteps, he fell asleep.

*

He hadn’t had one of his strange, superreal dreams for a month or two, maybe longer, but he woke into it already knowing he was dreaming and relieved by it. Bucky sat on Steve’s childhood bed and Steve knelt at his feet, holding his hands, listening earnestly while he spoke. The light through the windows made him think it was morning, and it was quiet, for Brooklyn. It wasn’t exactly cold, and not the sickly hot breeze of July, but somewhere in between that felt like late September, the end of summer. His old room looked spare and clean and so shabby, his blanket more threadbare than he remembered, his two pairs of worn shoes, one for weekdays and one for Sunday best, lined up at the end of his bed.

For the most part, the Bucky of his dreams looked as Steve had seen him last, but sometimes he was different—a little older, his hair longer, a darker, sleeker metal arm, in trousers and a jacket that reminded Steve of his old Howling Commandos uniform. Once, he had appeared in that uniform itself, battered all to hell, his arm missing and his face and left side covered in blood. He tried to speak, but Steve, huddled shaking on the floor with his hands over his eyes trying to block out the sight of him, was completely incapable of responding. He looked down at himself, muttered, “Goddammit,” and left, the dream dissolving. This time he was younger, maybe twenty, his face smooth and unformed and still just a little round. He had seemed big to Steve at the time because he was so much smaller, but now Steve could see he was lanky, hadn’t quite grown into himself yet. The way he looked down at Steve was the same, though, his eyes teasing but soft.

“You’re going to have to be quick,” Bucky said. “You won’t have time to wait for Tony, so you’re going to have to get Scott by yourself.”

“Tony?” Steve asked, scowling.

“What happened before doesn’t matter anymore,” Bucky said. “Fixing everything is too important.”

“What am I fixing? Why are we here?”

“It’s the only way I can get to you,” Bucky said, looking around. “I don’t know why it has to be here, though. Strange wouldn’t explain it. Man, that guy’s a dick.”

“Can you stay with me?” Steve asked, lowering his head to rest his cheek on their clasped hands. “Please, please stay with me.”

“I always stay as long as I can.” Bucky ran his fingers through Steve’s hair, pushing it off his forehead. He looked older suddenly, pain settling over his face and turning him both harder and gentler. “I can’t believe how much I miss you. This fucking thing hurts all the time.”

Steve turned his hand palm side up and saw his own name printed on Bucky’s wrist. He was used to his own wrist aching in the dreams, but he’d never seen his name on Bucky’s skin before.

“I like having my name on you,” Steve said, pressing his lips to the writing. It felt hot, electric against his mouth. “It’s like I’m yours. Like you want me.”

Bucky gave him a funny look. “Your subconscious is a weird place, pal.”

Steve nodded fervently, kissing his hands again and again, memorizing the feel of them to hold onto when he woke up, long elegant fingers, capable and strong. Then his hands were gone from Steve’s grasp—he was halfway across the room—the door had become the hole in the train once more and Bucky was disappearing through it.

“Please stay,” Steve opened his mouth to say, but he was awake. He said it out loud anyway, disoriented.

“Steve?” Bucky stood at the door of the hut, and Steve blinked hard. He was kneeling beside the bed, like a child praying. He had never walked in his sleep, barely moved most of the time, but something about the dream had felt even more real than the others, like he hadn’t even slept.

“Don’t go,” Steve said without completely realizing what he was saying. His voice was hitching.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Bucky said, coming to sit on the bed, in almost the exact spot dream Bucky had sat.

“Oh god,” Steve said, burying his face in the blankets, not wanting to see this cold parody of the Bucky in his dreams, who loved him. Bucky rubbed his back for a while.

“Nightmare?” he asked.

“Sort of,” Steve said, muffled in the blankets. “I’m sorry.”

“I just got back. You didn’t wake me up,” Bucky said.

“No.” He turned his head, wanting to press his face against Bucky’s leg, get close to his warm body somehow. Instead, he pulled away so Bucky’s hand fell from his back. “I’m sorry for making you think I don’t want to be here. There’s nothing I want more, Buck. I want to be here with you all the time. I’m…I’m having some problems.”

Bucky slid down on the floor next to him. He was barefoot, still shirtless and in just his shorts, hair pulled back. Steve wanted to touch him so much he had to clench his hands in the blanket, breathing hard. “It’s something you can’t talk to me about?” he asked.

“No,” Steve said. “Later, maybe. Not now. I have to work through it by myself.”

Bucky watched him for a moment, then nodded. “All right. But you can come to me. I’m, you know, not a model of mental health, but you can always talk to me.”

“I will,” Steve said. “I want to. Someday.”

Bucky leaned against the side of the bed and looked him over again. Something in his gaze was as soft as dream Bucky’s. “You keep taking off because you have some secret and you’re afraid you’re gonna tell me,” he said, smiling.

“No,” he said hotly.

“How are you a hundred-year-old international criminal and you still can’t lie?” Bucky got to his feet, patting Steve’s shoulder. “It’s all right. I’m not gonna pry. You’ll spill it eventually.”

“I’m not–” Steve found one of the pillows on the bed and threw it at him. “I’d never tell you anyway.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a real secret agent,” Bucky said. “Look, let’s go to the hot spring in the caves. It’s two in the morning, nobody will be there. The guy I give the goat butter to, Adembe, he told me it was a good place for healing, and I really do feel a lot better after I’m in there for a while.”

Steve had the same vision of being alone with Bucky in the water and waited for panic to rise again, but there was nothing but tired resignation. He still knelt beside the bed with his head resting on it, feeling like he had been poured there. “All right,” he said. “Can’t hurt, right?”

“There you go, Captain Optimism,” Bucky said, heading into the bathroom and coming out with towels. He tossed one onto Steve’s face.

Following Bucky through the grass in the moonlight brought him back to nights in Italy, in Poland, in Germany. Was he ever going to be able to shake it, the way the past rose up and overlapped the present without his consent? The noise was the same, the hushed footsteps, heel first, careful to roll lightly along the outside of the foot and never to step down fully anywhere. They were heading a little south of the path Steve had run earlier, toward a hill that dropped off. Steve had seen it from above a few times, and noticed people standing or sitting around it, but hadn’t realized that underneath the hill was an entrance to a series of caves. The tunnels were less moldy than caves he had been in before, just flat gray rock, not slimy under his hand as they made their way down. There was a faint purple light in the caves that guided them, and when Bucky said, “Here we go,” and turned right, Steve saw where the light was coming from: the bubbling pool of water gave off a deep purple and blue glow.

“Buck, this is amazing,” he said, throwing his towel down on one of the dry rocks and peeling off his shirt and shorts. He almost kept his underwear on, but a peek at Bucky revealed he hadn’t even worn any, and he decided at the last second to just let himself enjoy something for once, sliding into the water with a noise that he knew sounded pornographic even as he made it.

“What did I tell you?” Bucky said. He was massaging the area around the metal on his shoulder, looking pretty damn pleased with himself.

“Fine,” Steve said. “I guess once in a great while you’re right about something.”

The water only came up to his neck if he stood in the middle of the pool, which he did for a while. Bucky leaned against the smooth rocks and looked like he was half-dozing, still massaging his shoulder.

“Hurts?” Steve asked. He felt like he was dozing a little bit too.

“Just sore sometimes. It’s embedded pretty deep,” Bucky said. “Gets knotted, but not like a muscle.”

Steve reached out, almost asking if he wanted Steve to get it for him. He had two very strong hands; it would only make sense. But he had been right about one thing—touching Bucky here would be a mistake. He could see, as clearly as one of his dreams, his fingers digging into Bucky’s muscles, pushing his hair out of the way to reveal the line of his neck, the way Bucky would let his head hang and make soft noises while Steve’s hands made him feel good.

All bad choices.

Bucky saw him reach out anyway and grabbed his hand with a small smile. He wasn’t mad anymore, Steve knew. It took a lot to really piss him off and Steve was one of the only people on earth who could get him there, but Steve was also the only one who could bring him back down again. That hard look was gone; Steve was forgiven. Relief made him a little reckless and he allowed Bucky to pull him closer until they were resting beside each other on the same rock, shoulders touching. Bucky gave a contented sigh and they drifted, quiet and slow and warm. Steve felt the tension release in the places he carried it most: his stomach, his shoulders, his forehead. There was something inside him like a boulder that wouldn’t be moved no matter what, tension that wasn’t going to go away, and he wondered if it ever could, if there would ever be a time he could just set it down. Maybe, he thought, maybe…

“Hey, don’t want you to drown,” Bucky said softly, grabbing his hand again. “Let’s get you back home.”

“Brooklyn?” he mumbled, blinking awake.

“Yeah, Steve. Brooklyn, Wakanda.”

Even the warm air was cold against his skin when he dragged himself out, making him shiver in pleasure as they walked back to the hut. He liked the way his dry clothes felt against his still slightly damp skin, like he’d been washed really clean for the first time in years and a lot of the old muck was gone. The bruised feeling in his chest was still there, a steady abiding ache that he thought might never leave him, but it was different somehow, less ugly. Even following Bucky through the grass was different from before. The past left him alone, letting a memory form that was only here and now.

There was a rock outside the hut that was like a bench, flat and smooth, perfect for sitting and looking up at the sky. He hadn’t really wanted to do so before. The stars were the worst company when there was something you didn’t want to think about. The day allowed you to hide, but in the night it was always right there in front of you. You were scraped down to your most basic self then, and Steve was not a fan of being scraped down to his most basic self, not even now when he felt better than he had since…well, since 1945.

“It’s so beautiful,” Bucky murmured, sitting on the rock beside him.

Steve toyed with the grass tickling his calf. “It’s hard to look at,” he said abruptly.

“The night usually is,” Bucky said.

The urge to rest his head on Bucky’s shoulder, to lean against him and just belong to him for a little while, to not be anything but Bucky’s friend Steve, was so ferocious that he almost couldn’t resist it. The sweetness of his dreams intruded, pushing him. He could turn to Bucky and be comforted. He knew how it would feel, how much relief it would bring, but he couldn’t—he absolutely could not take any comfort from him as a lie.

After a few minutes, Bucky said, “It’s been pretty hard for you, huh?”

He pressed against Steve, so warm and comfortable that Steve actually did lean for a second out of surprise. He straightened right away, but Bucky put a hand on his back to keep him close. Later, he thought that was probably the tipping point, Bucky’s touch through the cotton of his shirt. The bruised feeling increased until it hurt to breathe, and the back of his throat ached, his eyes burning.

“I did all right.” His voice broke, and he took in a quivering breath and tried again, but he could barely choke the words out. “I just missed you.”

Bucky seemed to know what was happening before he did and drew him in until Steve’s head rested on his shoulder. It dropped onto him so fast that he was crying before he had even reached out blindly to grab onto Bucky. His fingers clenched in Bucky’s shirt and then it really hit him, in that harsh, hard, uncontrollable way that happens when there’s too much behind it to stop. He was a mess for a while, clinging to Bucky and knowing, deep down, that Bucky would know not to pull away or ask what was wrong or if he was okay. Bucky was a shield around him, his hand following a slow, gentle path up and down Steve’s back, lips warm against his ear as he talked soft nonsense, a steady litany of _I know, I know_. It seemed like hours before he calmed down, but he stayed where he was just to listen to Bucky's voice, the slow lull of it, a rhythm that barely shifted when his hand moved up and began to stroke Steve's hair.

“We’re okay now, though, aren’t we?” Bucky said after a while. “The two of us? We’re all right?”

Steve lifted his head at that and Bucky cupped his cheek, looking at him gravely, like the question wasn’t rhetorical. He nodded. Bucky smiled and tipped forward a little so their foreheads touched for a moment, then very gently pressed his lips against Steve’s. When he pulled back, Steve’s breath gave a convulsive hitch like he was about to cry again and he jerked away, his face hot, but Bucky grabbed his hand and held it fast.

“Hey,” he said. “Was that all right? I thought…maybe I was wrong, but I thought you might want to be kissed. I’m sorry.”

“I do—I did, I do. I definitely do,” Steve said. “But why?”

“You know why,” Bucky said, tilting his head and grinning at him with that old exasperation and amusement, so familiar that he closed his eyes and swallowed with difficulty.

“I know how I feel,” he said. “That’s about it.”

Bucky squeezed Steve’s hand tight and pressed it against his chest, flattening it over his heart so Steve could feel how fast it was beating. “My whole life,” he said.

Steve opened his mouth to say something almost certainly ill-advised, but nothing came out anyway. He could only shake his head, flexing his hand against the soft material of Bucky’s shirt.

“Do you really not know how much I…” Bucky kept Steve’s hand in his and drew it up to his own cheek, rubbing the knuckles against his face, his eyes closing like just the feeling of Steve’s skin on his was too much. His voice was soft and low and hesitant when he continued. “How much I love you?”

“No,” Steve said, watching Bucky’s mouth. “Not at all.”

“Really?” Bucky said. “Jesus, Steve.”

His world tilted sideways again, as it had when he realized he loved Bucky and suddenly everything he thought he’d known about himself had to be examined with different eyes. Bucky, always there beside him, touching him so carefully, teasing the life out of him but making him laugh when no one else could, not even his mother. Not just standing up for him when the older kids teased him—or, if he had to be honest, when he picked fights with them—but going after bullies himself when Steve explained why he was fighting. His desperate anger when Steve lied on form after form. His letters, so perfectly Bucky that Steve could almost hear his amused drawl, until the end when he always said, _The only thing I’m happy about is that you’re not here to see this. I couldn’t stand it. Please stay home_. The way he sat with Steve in the dark after Steve saw what the war was like, the way he let Steve hide his face and pretend he was all right _._  The way he rubbed the back of Steve’s neck and let him be for a while before he confessed, _I didn’t want you here, pal, but at the same time, it’s all I wanted, you know?_ The way he put the grease pencil in Steve’s hand and said firmly, _Steve knows what to do_ , when the Howling Commandos were all gathered around the maps doing land navigation with him for the first time. The way he always looked at Steve to laugh, to notice something, to be excited. The way his notebook said simply, _This is Steve_.

Bucky’s beard was soft against his knuckles. He pressed a kiss to each one, and the movement broke whatever had kept Steve motionless. He reached for Bucky in a way that was familiar from dreams, with a longing so sharp that he expected to lose him before he’d even touched him. Bucky angled his left side away, but Steve pulled him close again.

“You don’t have to do that, not for my sake,” he murmured, almost against Bucky’s lips, his hand hovering over Bucky’s ribs. “Unless it hurts? Is it uncomfortable for me to touch you?”

“ _No_ ,” Bucky said.

He pulled away for a moment and Steve choked back the agonized protest that wanted to come out, reaching, reaching—that longing again, like he was already gone. But Bucky was only standing in front of him, urging him back down onto the stone bench with a gentle hand, then straddling him. He was heavy and weighted Steve’s hips down with deliberate, firm pressure. Steve made a startled noise that couldn’t have sounded like anything but painful desire, and looked up at Bucky wonderingly.

“Go ahead,” Bucky said. “You want to touch me?”

He nodded, his hands already on Bucky’s thighs.

Bucky nudged the tips of their noses together for a moment before he tilted his head and—Steve hadn’t even realized it, but he was turning his mouth up to be kissed, straining to be touched by Bucky’s lips, his breath trembling out of him. And Bucky gave it to him with a pleased smile, cupping the back of his head and kissing him slow and hot, no rush at all, stretching it out until Steve felt like he was melting, becoming whatever shape Bucky wanted him to become. When Bucky pulled back, stroking Steve’s hair and the nape of his neck, he looked like he was melting into it too.

“I wanted this,” he said, his voice thick. “God, I wanted it so much. I knew it would be like this.”

Steve tried to memorize everything, the feel of Bucky’s thighs tightening against his, the muscles of his back under Steve’s hands, through the material of his shirt. He wanted to touch Bucky’s hair but didn’t quite dare, and instead slid his hands downward.

“Do you want…?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Bucky whispered. “Get me on the bed, do it.”

It wasn’t quite what he’d wanted to ask, but as always, Bucky’s ideas were much better than his own. He picked him up with his hands under his ass and Bucky locked his legs around Steve’s hips, holding on tight until Steve had stumbled into the hut. Once they were on the bed in a heap Bucky rolled them over and stood, watching Steve with his eyes bright, and pushed his way between Steve’s thighs. Steve spread them immediately and then, realizing what he was doing, was overcome by shivering, pleasurable embarrassment. He wanted to cover his face, but instead let his arms rest above his head as if in surrender.

“Look at you,” Bucky said, putting his hand on Steve’s stomach and sliding it up, over his chest and his shoulder, then back down to his chest. Steve yanked his shirt off fast and arched without any grace whatsoever when Bucky ran his fingers over his nipples, squeezing and tugging until they were stiff and Steve was pushing up against him again and again and making helpless, guttural noises. When he was just starting to think, through the haze of pleasure, that he might come, Bucky stopped and pressed him down into the bed, kissing him again so slow and sweet that he finally accepted the truth: Bucky loved him.

He slid his arms around Bucky and drew him down beside him, suddenly unable to get close enough. There was something about touching him that was like worshipping him, moving beyond the knowledge he had always had of what Bucky’s body looked and felt like and into something much deeper. He had known that the curve of Bucky’s neck was warm, that he was ticklish there, that there was no better place to rest your head if you were tired or upset, but now, as he sucked gently and Bucky writhed against him, choking out short, sharp, helpless moans, the new knowledge felt more than sexual. _Now I know how you like it_ , he thought, with a tenderness so fierce it was almost unbearable.

Their legs tangled together and he was riding Bucky’s thigh before he even realized it. The pressure and friction against his painfully hard cock was so good, gathering pleasure between his legs, that he couldn’t stop saying Bucky’s name, over and over again. He almost apologized, but Bucky was rocking against him too, reaching down to grab the hem of his own shirt and getting distracted for a moment by kissing him. Together they dragged it off and Steve made an embarrassing, desperate whimpering noise until he found Bucky’s mouth again, almost frantic.

“I don’t look so great,” Bucky said softly with a little crooked smile, matter-of-fact, and Steve, already so far gone he knew he was going to come before he got his pants off, greedily kissed every part he could reach, his throat, his shoulder, the edge of what remained of the metal arm, whispering _yes you do, you do, oh my god, yes you do_. He couldn’t stop moving his hips, driven by the pressure and the feel of Bucky’s hand directing him and the way Bucky trembled against him, his breath panting out in hard, excited gasps.

He slid his fingers into Bucky’s hair as he had wanted to do for months, the way he’d done it in dreams so many times, stroking his scalp and pulling gently to give him better access to the beautiful sharp line of Bucky’s jaw. Bucky froze, thighs tightening around Steve, fingers digging into his back, and just as Steve was about to pull back and ask if he was all right, he buried his face in Steve’s neck and sobbed, an overwhelmed, raw sound.

“Are you all right?” Steve whispered. Bucky nodded jerkily against his neck, still clutching Steve tight. It fell on him then, the realization that he had made him come. Before he knew what to do with that, Bucky’s hand was sliding into his underwear and over his cock, and the combination—Bucky’s fingers around him and _knowing_ , the way he had always wanted to know what Bucky was like when he had sex, without ever admitting it to himself—made him come so fast he couldn’t keep up, all over Bucky’s hand, his stomach, the blankets. He cried out in breathless surprise, again and again, noises he barely recognized out of himself. The sweet flood of pleasure pulled him with it for a long time, and when it retreated Bucky was kissing him again, unevenly, both of them shaky and exhausted.

“All this time,” Bucky murmured, suddenly pressing his lips against Steve’s forehead like a blessing. “I can’t believe you waited all this time because you thought I didn’t love you, for some stupid reason.”

“I could say the same thing,” Steve said. “It hasn't even been a year for me, but you—your whole life, you said.”

Bucky was quiet for a while, first using the sheet to try to clean them up and then rolling his eyes and giving up when it didn’t work. “I couldn't have told you when we were younger.”

“If you’d said something, I would have figured it out,” Steve said. “It was always there. I just couldn’t see it.”

Bucky shook his head. “I couldn’t have said it, not then. It was too much. I never minded that you didn’t feel the same way. But these last few months you looked at me like…I don’t know, like I hurt you, like I kicked your dog or something, and you’d twist yourself all out of shape if I touched you.”

“God, I’m sorry.” Steve closed his eyes against the guilt.

“You should be, you dramatic asshole,” Bucky said. “I felt terrible.”

Steve groaned and rolled onto his stomach, burying his face in the pillows, and Bucky drew him back out again, wrapping around him.

“Aw, come on,” he said. “You were just being dumb because you were scared. It’s all right. I figured it out earlier anyway. Even though you’re so stealthy.”

“I _am_ stealthy,” Steve mumbled, falling asleep, but when Bucky shifted to get more comfortable, he held fast, clinging.

“Hey, it’s all right,” Bucky whispered. 

Steve shook his head, his heart suddenly racing.

“I’m not going away,” Bucky said. “I’m not gonna let you out of my sight.”

“Don’t, okay?” he said, voice breaking. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“No.” Bucky pulled him even closer, stroking his hair. “Sorry to say it, pal, but you really are stuck with me. Those are your goats now too.”

Steve tried to calm himself, but he was afraid to close his eyes until the even beat of Bucky’s heart and the slow rise and fall of his chest dragged him into sleep.

He woke again when the sun was already up, tensing for a second and then relaxing again, pressing his face into Bucky’s neck. Bucky tightened his arm around him. “You all right, sweetheart?” he said softly. Steve shuddered and nodded, goosebumps rising at the feeling of Bucky’s lips against his ear and at the low, tender sound of his voice, at the feeling of being surrounded by him.

Steve’s phone buzzed, and he lifted his head long enough to see the text from Sam. _I slept on it. Not mad at u. Meet up in sch again?_

Bucky rolled away from him and headed toward the bathroom. “Tell him you’re about to have shower sex.”

He replied, _On vacation, tyvm_ , and ran after Bucky, ignoring the series of champagne bottles and eggplant emojis that began to appear from both Sam and an unknown number.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fury was staring at him hard, his left eye shifting from brown to milky gray and back again. “When you wake up, you need to call me and say these words: ‘When it happens, call Carol.’"

He hadn’t expected Bucky to be serious about the shower sex, so he was a little off balance when he followed him into the bathroom and saw he was already naked. Bucky was as casual about nudity as he always had been, and Steve as uncomfortable despite years in the military, but that wasn’t all or even most of it. He stripped his clothes off, red and self-conscious, watching Bucky while he pretended not to. That wasn’t new either—he had always watched, with a little buzzing feeling of curiosity and envy, and now he knew it really had always been there under the surface, waiting for him to realize that he wanted to touch. Bucky was leaner than he had been in Romania, muscles smoother and more defined, closer to the body Steve remembered during the war but still big. Steve couldn’t stop staring at his thighs, and then, when he couldn’t drag his eyes away, his cock.

Bucky watched him watching, his head tilted a little. “You all right?”

He looked down at himself and saw the state he was in, blushing all down his chest, nipples hard, goosebumps spread all over his arms, his cock stiff and already getting wet, and was so embarrassed he couldn’t breathe for a second. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

“What the hell for?”

He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “I want you so much.”

“Come here and kiss me then,” Bucky said, and he shivered and obeyed.

He was still awkward for a second, but relaxed into the touch of Bucky’s mouth. In each of the kisses he had had before, there was a kind of bright spark there that he had thought about afterward, even Nat’s. It was different with each person, and with Bucky there was something so deep in it, so complete, that he was surrounded the moment they touched. Bucky kissed him like it was everything to him, long and sweet and slow, an end in itself. 

“Do you think I don’t want it just as bad?” Bucky said when he pulled away. “I’ve wanted to kiss you since I met you.”

“Oh yeah?” Steve tightened his hands on Bucky’s hips, wanting more and barely able to restrain himself. “Five years old, you wanted to kiss me?”

“Yeah, I was a little pervert.” Bucky gave him one of his old grins with his eyes and nose scrunched up in amusement. He’d never been able to make himself stop doing it even though he complained to Steve that it made him look stupid in pictures. “I didn’t know what it meant, but the other boys were always trying to chase after girls and kiss them, and I knew I wanted that. Not to chase you—you’d have probably died—but to kiss you on the cheek and have you kiss me back.”

“You did it a few times,” Steve said, remembering running down the street with Bucky holding his hand, stopping to catch his breath, Bucky giving him an emphatic smack on the cheek and saying _Hurry up, my ma will kill me if we don’t get home in time for supper._

“Until you told me to stop. You didn’t like being kissed,” Bucky said. “At least, not by me.”

“I was so dumb.” Steve rested his forehead on Bucky’s. “I must have worked pretty hard not to realize I wanted you.”

“We’re here now,” Bucky said. “There’s nothing more important than that. I know you don’t really want to talk about what happened while I was on the run, but I thought about that a lot.”

Steve slid his arms around him tight. “You’re wrong. I want to know everything,” he said, kissing down Bucky’s neck. Bucky went boneless against him for a second, straightened, and then gave in again with a soft noise of surprise.

“Shower on,” Bucky gasped, shuddering when Steve pressed his teeth gently at the curve of his neck. “Jesus—give me a chance to…”

Steve backed him into the water, until he hit the shower wall. He wasn’t sure if he should press their hips together, but he was so hard he almost couldn’t help himself, and then Bucky arched against him and they slid together, slippery under the water. “A chance to what?” he asked. Bucky's lower lip trembled when Steve pressed tighter against him. It was such a small thing, but Steve was suddenly so turned on he felt light-headed. 

“Come all over myself, I guess,” Bucky said breathlessly. “I have to ask—was last night the first time you ever…”

“Was it that noticeable?” Steve asked.

“No,” Bucky said. “It’s just, you said you’d never shared a bed with anyone but me. I saw you kiss that one agent.”

“It’s just you,” Steve said, smiling against Bucky’s mouth and biting his lower lip because he could, because Bucky’s mouth was so beautiful. “What about you? Did you have anyone while you were in hiding? Anyone here?”

He felt Bucky laugh before he heard it. “Yeah, Steve. Sleeping my way through Wakanda.”

“Well, I didn’t _know_.” He bit Bucky’s upper lip this time and felt the muscles in his ass tighten under his hands. _He likes that_ , he thought, and felt a little faint again.

“Sometimes you’re the only person I see for weeks at a time,” Bucky said, pushing Steve’s wet hair off his forehead. “And you’re the only one I want. That hasn’t changed.”

“But you did—with some women, when we were younger.”

“Yeah.” Bucky gave him that old lazy, slow smile. “Not too many. They didn’t want to get in trouble and I didn’t either, but I used my mouth a lot.”

Steve stared at Bucky’s lips, imagining a series of girls riding his face while he touched himself, and shuddered. “I bet you were good at it,” he said, noticing the way Bucky flushed, lips parting.

“Pretty smooth line, Rogers,” Bucky said. His hand shook a little as he ran his fingers over the side of Steve’s face.

Steve shook his head, frowning. “I don’t want to be smooth,” he said. “I just want to know how to…”

“How to what, use your mouth?” Bucky kissed him. “I’ll teach you, if you want.”

“You will?”

 Bucky arched against him again with a startled noise, and Steve realized he’d dug his fingers into his ass. “You want me to teach you how to suck?”

“ _Bucky_ ,” he gasped, rocking hard against him, his entire body lighting up at the words. He pulled away again, uncertain, but Bucky dragged him back in and grabbed one of his hands.

“You can touch me, you know,” he said, and Steve did it immediately, fitting his hand around his cock and stroking him fast, rubbing against him and kissing his ear, his neck. He sucked on the spot he liked best, the juncture of neck and shoulder, biting a little harder than he meant to, already coming even before Bucky tilted his head back against the shower wall and spilled onto his fingers with a shocked cry.

Steve slowed his hand gradually and then stopped. Bucky had wrapped one of his legs around Steve’s hip and grabbed onto him like he was trying to climb him, and he slowly let go so they were just pressed tight against each other, panting while the water washed over them. Steve rested his head on Bucky’s shoulder and hugged him fiercely.

“Jesus Christ, Steve,” Bucky said after a while.

“I’m sorry,” he said, mortified.

“That was a good Jesus Christ,” Bucky said, smacking his ass without much energy. “But if you’re that enthusiastic about sucking my dick, I think I’m gonna die.”

“Oh my god.” Steve pulled away and stood directly under the water to try and cool himself down, but he was still hard and he couldn’t shake the image of being on his knees while Bucky told him what to do.

“Hey, don’t feel bad,” Bucky said, standing behind him and sliding his hand down Steve’s stomach. “There are worse ways to go.”

Afterward, Steve stood in the living room, naked, staring down at the clothes he had laid out on the bed without really seeing them. There was a strange sort of fog in his head, or maybe more like a bubble around him—he didn’t even want to get dressed because he had the absurd feeling that it would shut off this new thing between them. Like Bucky would forget, somehow. He couldn’t help but wonder what had and had not changed between them, and finally decided on nothing. Nothing had changed. He was still Steve and Bucky was still Bucky, and maybe they got up to some new things in bed, but otherwise they were what they always had been to each other. It was stupid to feel a burst of loneliness, as if he were putting on armor again and shutting something out.

Bucky came in from the bathroom just as Steve finished dressing, still twisting his hair back with the little sticks that kept it in place, and stopped behind him on his way to the kitchen area.

“I’m gonna be so distracted all day,” he said in a low voice, kissing his way down the back of Steve’s neck the way he had in the shower and destroying every resolve he had just made.

Steve reached back to grasp him and bring him closer, and closed his eyes at the pleasure of Bucky’s body pressed all along his back. “Do you want me to leave you alone so you can get your work done?”

“Hell no. You know what day it is.”

Steve sighed. “It’s goat thermometer day again, isn’t it.”

“Deworming,” Bucky said, slapping him on the back. “No goat asses for you today, sorry.”

*

There was a new goat. Or at least, Bucky claimed there was a new one and Steve believed him. The others were all more or less demonic—Steve was starting to really understand why goats were associated with Satan—but they tolerated Bucky now, and he had learned how to catch them without too much trouble. The new one, though, Steve recognized the look in his eye. That was pure hatred. He was brown with a white stripe around the middle, and he stared at Bucky, chewing and not blinking, while they milked the mother goats.

“Do you ever feel like he’s going to break into your hut and murder you?” Steve asked after they were finished with the morning chores.

“He can’t get in. He doesn’t have your security clearance,” Bucky said, hauling the feed up over his shoulder.

He was one of only three goats that needed deworming, but it took them most of the afternoon to trap them into a little fenced off area and get them to eat the pellets along with their feed. The goat’s name was Joe, which Steve soon discovered was short for Joey Jimmy Farrell, a boy who had lived one street over from Steve and was called Joey Jimmy to distinguish him from his cousin Joey Frankie Farrell. Steve, age five, had accused Joey Jimmy, age seven, of cheating at jacks and taking everyone’s pennies, prompting Joey Jimmy to become the first person to ever punch Steve in the face. He had apparently enjoyed the experience so much that afterward he took every opportunity to repeat it for the next five years, until the entire Joey Jimmy clan moved to Jersey.

“He got me too, a couple of times,” Bucky said. “He used to stand across the street from your place, chewing his gum and staring at us just like that.”

Joey Jimmy the goat gave a baleful mnaaaah noise and stared harder, not eating the deworming pellets.

“I like him. He keeps me on my toes,” Bucky said.

“He’s going to eat your toes,” Steve said.

After the second milking, they walked into the village with a crate of cheese and butter to sell to Adembe. He was one of the few people Bucky talked to besides the children, and every time Steve had seen him so far he had tried to recruit both of them for football despite the regrettable fact that they were American.

“We know how to play,” Steve protested.

“I’m sorry to tell you this, but you do not,” Adembe said. “But we need a bigger team. We keep losing by default.”

“Sorry,” Bucky said. “It might be a while before I’m okay in a group.”

Adembe looked hopefully at Steve. The last time they had had this discussion, Steve was in the middle of panicking and wondering if he’d ever be able to stay in Wakanda for more than a few hours. This time he said, “Whenever Bucky’s ready.”

“Did you mean that?” Bucky asked on the walk back. “About playing football?”

“Sure,” Steve said. “It would be fun. We could use some fun.”

“Huh,” Bucky said. “Well, you don’t have to wait on me. Do they still have those tiny soccer shorts?”

“I’d wear them for you,” Steve said. “You’re a real fan of a man in uniform, aren’t you?”

“One man,” Bucky said, smiling. The late afternoon sun fell on him, outlining him in amber, and Steve loved him like he'd never loved anything in his life, as uncomplicated and easy as he had when they were children and there was just nobody in the world better than Bucky Barnes.

*

He found himself oddly nervous when night fell. There was that same lonely feeling again, wondering what had changed. It had been easy to fall asleep with Bucky wrapped around him the night before, but to do it deliberately now felt impossible. Asking to be held was out of the question, but how else was he supposed to do this thing? He slid into bed beside Bucky and was too conscious of him, the way their arms touched, not entirely uncomfortable but still uneasy.

“Did you tell Sam or Natasha?” Bucky asked just as he opened his mouth to say something inane. “I mean, will you?”

“They figured it out,” Steve said. “They knew how I felt before I did. Sometimes I feel like everyone knew before I did.”

“I didn’t,” Bucky said. “It's a good thing you started acting so weird or I'd never have known.”

“Well, I’d have never guessed you felt like that about me either,” Steve said. “When did that happen, anyway?”

“It was always you,” Bucky said. “I guess I was about seventeen before I really figured it out, but you were always my guy.”

“How did I not know?” He stared at the ceiling of the hut. “That’s what I keep asking myself.”

Bucky shrugged, his shoulder moving against Steve’s. “Don’t ask me. I wasn’t exactly shouting it from the rooftop, but I think I was pretty obvious.”

“Sam said maybe I didn’t recognize it because I don’t know what it’s like to have a normal friendship,” he said, turning to face Bucky.

Bucky reached out to pull him close. Steve happily curled up to him, closing his eyes in pleasure as Bucky smoothed a hand up and down his back. “I guess he’s not wrong about everything,” Bucky said. “We’ve been through the ringer.”

“He also said I’m high maintenance,” Steve said, rubbing his face against Bucky’s chest. “Which is stupid, right?”

“Steve,” Bucky said. “You are the highest maintenance. There’s nobody higher, babe.”

“What?” Steve struggled to get out of Bucky’s grasp. “How? How am I high maintenance?”

Bucky tried to tug him back down, laughing, and then laughed harder when he saw Steve’s face. “How many people—no, Steve, listen, don’t. Hold up your fingers and count how many people you know that you’ve never gotten into a fight with. It would take me a week to put together a list of just the nuns you battled.”

“That’s not high maintenance,” Steve began. “That’s–”   

“I had an entire box of bandages in my room with your name on it. I spent my whole twentieth birthday trying to find you when that guy, what was his name? Kenny Fitzgerald?”

“Fitzsimmons,” Steve said sulkily.

“He dragged you out of the bar after you told him to stop calling his girl names, and where did I find you?”

“The alley behind Jack's.”

Bucky put his hand on Steve’s scowling face. “Always in some alley or other,” he said. “Come here, don’t be mad.”

Steve settled back down against his chest with bad grace until Bucky kissed the top of his head.

“I don’t need to be maintained,” he said.

“No, you always could take care of yourself,” Bucky said. “It’s just, you never take it easy. That’s just how you are. It’s all right though. I’m a sucker for high maintenance guys.”

He was still a little irritated, wanting to push back against the entire idea of it because it embarrassed him on some level he didn’t even recognize, but lying there with his cheek resting against Bucky’s chest, fingers stroking through his hair until he was drowsy, he wondered if…well, not if he needed to be maintained, because he didn’t, but if there was a part of him that didn’t hate the idea of Bucky doing it. There was something under his skin that made him hot and shaky even as he shook his head.

Bucky stopped playing with his hair. “You all right?”

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice coming out wobbly. “I _don’t_ need to be maintained.”

“You said that already. I know,” Bucky said. After a few moments, Steve could almost hear him catch on. He shifted around on the bed so they were facing each other, but still kept Steve close. “I used to fantasize about it, you know, you trusting me enough to let me make you feel good. You always seemed untouchable, like you’d push someone away if they tried. But you like it, don’t you?”

Steve’s breath caught hard. “I would have pushed you away,” he said, still shaky. “Because I wanted it so much and I didn’t think anyone would ever want to…to be sweet to me. I would have thought you were making fun of me.”

“I wanted to be sweet to you all the time,” Bucky said. “Or mean to you, if that’s what you wanted. Whatever you wanted, I wanted to give it to you.”

What he wanted, he thought, was what he’d been dreaming about—to just be Steve, to know that whenever he needed to, he could set it all down and belong to Bucky. He wouldn’t have to be responsible for anything, know anything, think anything. He’d just be Bucky’s. Even as he thought it, he shook his head again, angry at himself because he didn’t want it—he didn’t, he couldn’t.

“I can’t explain what I want,” he said.

“You don’t need to be maintained,” Bucky said, running his hand from Steve’s bare shoulder down to his hip and back up again. “But do you want it?”

Steve shook his head, but whispered, “I think…maybe.” His skin felt so hot, glowing with the warmth that only seemed to come from having Bucky touch him.

Bucky didn’t ask him anything for a while, just pressed slow kisses all along the side of his face, his temple, his neck, while Steve came undone under his lips. He knew Bucky was observing him, watching how he fell apart, watching what made him lose it. It hit him again that this was _Bucky_ , that Bucky knew him in a million ways but not this way, and humiliation swept over him again before it banked itself into the warmth that was already building even as he struggled against it. Oh, he hated being told what to do, hated not being in charge, hated even the suggestion of surrender. But hadn’t he always surrendered to Bucky? Hadn’t he always wanted to, because it wasn’t surrender at all? He remembered the way he had felt the first time he hugged Bucky after he knew he loved him, recognizing an old, old desire that he hadn’t understood for what it was. This was an old feeling too, something he had buried deep because it hurt too much. He’d always known Bucky would be like this if he loved someone, all that deep down sweetness that nothing could destroy centered on one person, and he had believed it could never be centered on him.

“What do you think?” Bucky asked. “Are you my baby?”

Steve shivered so hard his breath shook, burying his face even further in Bucky’s shoulder. He wanted Bucky to wrap him up tighter, and as soon as he thought it, Bucky did so, rearranging them so Steve was held as tight as he could be.

“I guess you are.” He wasn’t smug, which might have put Steve’s back up, but so tender and soft, low and a little overwhelmed, that Steve allowed himself to be consumed by the surrender of being loved.

His eyes felt heavy, like he was a cat being petted, caught up in slow drugging pleasure. The tension that even swimming in the hot spring hadn’t removed entirely was starting to loosen, and he felt molten like gold under Bucky’s touch.

“What do you want me to do to you?” Bucky said as he stroked his fingers along Steve’s lower back. He had kept his hand there for so long that it seemed like it was designed to drive Steve crazy; he kept shivering and couldn’t concentrate on anything.

“What if I did want you to be rough with me?” he asked, instead of what he really wanted to say. “Hold me down, things like that?”

“I’d do it,” Bucky said. “Is that what you want?”

“What do _you_ want?”

“I’m easy.” Bucky’s smile was small and almost private for a moment before he included Steve in it. “You tell me what gets you going, and that’s what gets me going too.”

“Okay,” he began breathlessly. How could he say it without saying it? The idea of just blurting it out, _I want your cock in me_ , was unthinkable. He bit his lip and couldn’t go any further.

“You need me to say it?” Bucky asked. He was still smiling a little, because…well, because he knew him so well, Steve imagined.

Steve nodded.

Bucky leaned in close, right next to Steve’s ear. “I can make you come with my hand,” he said softly. “My mouth? Is that what you want?”

Trembling, holding onto Bucky so tight he didn’t know if he was ever going to let go, he shook his head.

“You want my fingers inside you?” Bucky said, and then lowered his voice even further. “Or my cock. Do you want my cock?”

“Yes,” he choked out. “Is that – you don’t have to.”

“Steve.” Bucky drew back and cupped his face. “I already told you. All I want, all I ever wanted, was to make you feel good. Do you think I wouldn’t want to? I’d have to be crazy.”

His breath left him in a hard rush and he pressed up even tighter against Bucky, kissing him in relief.

“I need something to get you wet,” Bucky said. “I don’t have anything though.”

“I do,” Steve said, scrambling out of the bed so fast that Bucky laughed.

“I guess we have a lot to talk about,” he said as Steve rooted around in one of his bags, found the tube he had shoved down into one of the secret pockets, and tossed it to Bucky.

“I kept having dreams,” Steve said, tugging Bucky’s clothes off, wriggling out of his sweatpants. “About you doing this to me, again and again, and I just, I had to try it–”

“No, no. Tell me later. I can’t handle it right now, I’m about to go off as it is,” Bucky said, popping the lid off the lube and pushing it into Steve’s hand. “Help me out here.”

He squeezed the liquid onto Bucky’s palm and then let himself be guided back onto the bed with Bucky between his thighs, breathless at the intent look on his face.

“B–” he began, and then Bucky’s fingers were pressing very slowly inside him and he was writhing, gripping the blankets and completely losing all the thoughts in his head. “Bucky, _Bucky_ , Jesus Christ.”

“There you go,” Bucky said.

He was a little smug now, but still sweet about it, smiling down at him like Steve was the best thing he’d ever seen, and Steve thought he should probably hate that, but the flood of embarrassment lit him up from his toes to his palms to the top of his head. He tried to choke back his startled, almost panicked gasps as Bucky’s graceful fingers spread him open, but every time he tried to get a handle on himself he went under again, until Bucky stopped and pulled back. He was trembling like crazy, he realized, putting his hands over his face, and when Bucky touched his thigh to get him to spread his legs, his hips rocked up like he was about to just come like that, from Bucky’s skin against his. His cock was twitching again and again, dripping come onto his stomach.

“Do you want it?” Bucky asked, and Steve nodded without moving his hands from his face. “No, sweetheart. Let me see you.”

It took him a second, but he pulled his hands away. Bucky was touching himself carefully, and something about the slow movement and the way Bucky watched him with his eyes half-closed in pleasure made Steve lose it a little more. “I want it,” he said, his breath catching on a sob half way through. “I want it, Buck, please, I want it so bad.”

Bucky’s face softened and he leaned in right away, pressing his cock just inside Steve. “God, you really do, don’t you?”

He turned his face away and closed his eyes tight, but he couldn’t lie. “ _Yes_ ,” he said, furious with himself when his voice cracked.

“Hey, it’s all right,” Bucky said, running his hand over Steve’s thigh as he moved. “It’s all right. I’m right here with you. I want it too, I always did.”

As he felt himself being spread open, he went right up to the edge, almost tipping over with every restrained jerk of his hips as he tried not to move. He held on, just barely, until Bucky was completely inside him. Pressed into the bed, he was dizzy with the newness of all of it, the unfamiliarity of his reaction. Bucky’s body kept him in place and it was making him _crazy_. Even the thought of it—he had no control; Bucky was the one making him come—pushed him closer and closer until he was delirious with panic and pleasure. The sensation of being filled was so good he was gasping out short little moans that he couldn’t stop—he was trying so hard not to lose control but it was happening and he thought…it was too much, he felt himself shaking his head in an attempt not to give into it completely, his cock pulsing even harder at the knowledge that he was helpless to stop it. It was exactly what he had wanted and he almost couldn’t handle it.

“You okay?” Bucky murmured. He took one of Steve’s hands from his shoulder and kissed his palm. 

“I don’t know,” he gasped. The pressure was heavy and tight and the pleasure built in waves that made him more and more mindless, and Bucky wasn’t even moving, just holding him tight to the bed while he struggled not to come.

“Do you want me to stop?”

Steve shook his head frantically.

“I won’t, then,” Bucky said, rolling his hips in slow thrusts. Steve pushed up against his unyielding body, and tears built at the corners of his eyes out of frustration and the melting pleasure that felt like it was spreading through every single atom, far too bright, far too much. He looked down and saw how desperately hard he was, how wet— _Bucky can see that, he can see how much you love this_ , he thought, and suddenly he was gone.

_Are you really going to let go like that_? his brain whispered, and he looked up at Bucky. _For him, yeah_ , he thought, and let go.

“Will you kiss me?” he asked, surprised by how his voice shook.

“Anything you want,” Bucky said, stroking the side of his face.

He flattened his hand next to Steve’s head, bracing them both, kissed him, and began to rock into him harder and faster. Steve could only hear his own heartbeat and Bucky’s ragged breathing, his low, soft _Steve, oh god, Steve_ , and realized Bucky was almost as out of it as he was. He reached out to pull him closer, running his hands over the smooth, beautiful muscles of his back, and Bucky’s hips stuttered.

“Touch yourself, please, sweetheart,” he murmured against Steve’s lips. “Please.”

“I’ll come,” Steve said, already right on the precipice just from the way Bucky begged him, rough, voice breaking, desperate.

“God, yes, _please_ ,” Bucky said, and Steve was gone. The pleasure tightened to a point, frozen, his breath sobbing in and out of him faster and faster, and then he came on Bucky’s cock, the thickness of it inside him so intense that he found himself arching up, mouth open, gasping out _ah, ah, ah_ as his come spread between them. Bucky drove into him again and the power in his hips, the fact that he had made Steve come so fast and hard, washed over him again and again until he was completely out of his mind. Bucky kissed him wildly anywhere he could reach, choking out his name.

After a moment he went lax against Steve, whose arms went around him automatically, and they lay there shivering until Bucky shifted and pulled out of him before settling into his arms again. Steve tentatively stroked his hair, and Bucky made a noise of supreme pleasure that was the only sound in the room for a long time.

“I’ve never seen anyone fight that hard against feeling good,” Bucky said into his neck eventually.

“I know, I know. I’m sorry,” Steve said.

“ _High maintenance_ ,” Bucky mumbled, and Steve laughed a little, but was already asleep before he finished.

*

He was in his childhood bedroom again. Empty. Outside the window, Brooklyn had disappeared and been replaced by the fields of Wakanda. A forcefield was slowly rising from the ground.

“It’s coming soon, Cap,” Fury said behind him. He turned and there in the corner of his room were Sam, Fury, and the kid…what was his name? The kid from the airport. Steve fought to remember until a nameplate appeared on his t-shirt that said PETER PARKER: SPIDER-MAN. While he watched, the nameplate slowly grew around him like the Iron Man suit until he was entirely covered by it.

“Why are you here?” Steve asked. “Where’s Bucky?”

“We’re desperate,” Sam said. “We’re out of time and you’re still not catching on. You know, it’s not like I thought you had a Stark IQ or anything, but damn.”

“Actually,” Fury said, “the smarter you are, the harder it is to get a message through like this. He won’t remember anything but little bits here and there.”

“Is that why you made me talk to Lang?” Sam asked, shaking his head. He was wearing the same outfit he had worn when Steve met him, right down to the sweatshirt. “Do you know what his plan is? He wants to get small, fly up into Thanos’s ass, and then get big. That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”

“It would work, though.” That was the kid from the airport. “You could blow him up from the inside. He could do it.”

“His exact words were ‘Me versus butt. I win.’” Sam glared at the kid. “I’m not having it go down like that.”

“Where’s Bucky?” Steve asked.

“He’s not even listening to the exploding asses,” Sam said. “He’s got that laser focus.”

“You won’t listen to your man,” Fury said. “But you’ll listen to me, won’t you, Cap?”

“Sure,” Steve said. The eyepatch kept appearing and then disappearing again, and Fury glared at him.

“Let me have a few minutes without it. I don’t get that very often,” he said. “Are you paying attention?”

“I’m paying attention,” he said, and then didn’t. “Where’s Bucky?”

“I’m here,” Bucky said from the bed, and Steve was wrapped around him even before the words were out of his mouth, hands in his short hair—this was a Bucky he’d never seen, a Bucky in his battle uniform from 1942 or ’43, before Steve rescued him—kissing him slow and hot like he wouldn’t get another chance. Bucky dragged him into his lap, arms tight around him, and he was making soft little gasping noises into Steve’s mouth as Steve’s fingers tugged on his hair.

“ _Wow_ ,” Sam said. “Barnes, you didn’t tell me this was gonna get X-rated. Kid, close your eyes.”

Bucky pulled back, eyes heavy, staring at Steve like he was about to push him up against a wall somewhere. His lips were swollen and Steve leaned in to kiss him again, and Bucky let him for just a few more seconds before he drew away and put a hand on Steve’s chest. “I miss you so much,” he whispered. “You gotta listen to Fury, though.”

“ _Bucky_ ,” he said, curling around him.

“Come on, you can do it,” Bucky said, running his hands up and down Steve’s back. “We don’t have much time and this is our last chance.”

“Cap,” Fury said. “Steve.”

Steve sighed and turned his head to acknowledge Fury.

“There’s something you need to tell me.” Fury was staring at him hard, his left eye shifting from brown to milky gray and back again. “When you wake up, you need to call me and tell me this. Say these words: ‘When it happens, call Carol.’ Say it back to me.”

“When it happens, call Carol,” Steve said.

“Again,” Fury said.

“When it happens, call Carol.”

They were on the train, the hole slowly expanding on the side as they rumbled over the tracks.

“What the hell?” Sam said.

“This is where I died. He dreams about it a lot,” Bucky said, not looking away from Steve, squeezing him tight and then kissing him again and again. “God, I love you. I love you, okay? I love you.”

“When it happens, call Carol,” Fury said.

“This is it,” Bucky said, clinging to Steve’s hand even as they were pulled toward the crumpled metal on the side of the train. “Don’t forget.”

“Why can’t you ever stay with me?” Steve asked, but they were gone, all of them.

*

He had never actually waited for one of the others to notify him of HYDRA activity, so he was a little surprised that it took almost two weeks for his phone to go off.

“Wanda says she’s hearing chatter in Germany again,” Sam said. “We can go without you if you want to finish your vacation.”

“I’m not letting you go alone,” Steve said. “I’ll be at pickup in three hours.”

Bucky was outside with the goats when Steve walked out with his go bag. He gave a little regretful smile and said, “It’s time, huh?”

“I’ll be back soon,” Steve said. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Why would I? A smart guy like you always uses a parachute when he jumps out of a plane,” Bucky said, squeezing his hand. Steve’s last sight as the transport took him to the Wakandan border was of Joey Jimmy kicking Bucky in the shin and running off into the field.

The pickup site was a hotel in Nampula. The jet was a good way outside the city, and he and Sam were quiet on the way there, not wanting to talk in front of the driver. Sam kept looking over at him and shaking his head, but he managed to wait until they had been dropped off and were walking to the jet before he stopped and smacked Steve’s arm.

“Come on,” he said, moving in close.

It took Steve a second to realize Sam was trying to hug him, and he returned it clumsily. “Thanks,” he said.

“You don’t even know why I’m hugging you, do you?” Sam asked.

“No, but you know,” he said. “Friends hug. I guess.”

“Look at yourself.” Sam pulled out his phone and tapped it a few times, then turned it toward Steve so he could see himself reflected in it. “I’ve never seen you look so happy. I’ve never seen you look happy, period. Even when you’re laughing you look like you’re about to teach someone a lesson.”

He did look different. Maybe it was the light, or maybe he really had been that tight-faced and gray and hard before. He wasn’t now; he looked like he had slept for a few weeks, gotten some sun, gotten a massage. Gotten…a lot of things. It was interesting to watch the flush spread across his face and down his neck.

“Hmm,” he said, handing the phone back to Sam, who immediately took a picture of him and started typing. “Are you sending that to Nat?”

“Yeah, and Wanda. We could all use a pick-me-up.”

“Send it to me too,” he said. Sam was right, which was annoying. He couldn’t stop smiling.

“Yeah?” Sam said. “You gonna tell me how it went down or do I have to just assume you took my excellent advice?”

Steve thought over the last two weeks and smiled even harder. “Actually, I didn’t take your advice at all,” he said. “Not even one word.”

“Oh, okay, of course you didn’t,” Sam said, throwing his bags into the jet. “You sorted yourself out all on your own and I didn’t have to tell you to stay your ass in one spot and stop running.”

“Nope. All my decisions were totally unrelated to you,” Steve said, unzipping his hoodie and shrugging it off. He heard Sam undressing behind him, muttering under his breath. “Seriously, though. Thanks. I did need to stop running and I wouldn’t have done it without you.”

“I know.” Sam threw a shoe at the back of his head. “Pay me back by finding me a woman who thinks dating a criminal is sexy.”

“You know all the same people I know,” Steve said. “This is Natasha’s area of expertise.”

“She refuses because, and I quote, she was only doing it for you because you were sad, and she is not a dating service.”

“Yeah, she also tried to set me up with a guy who makes craft beer, so maybe Natasha’s not your best bet.” Steve finished dressing and put in his ear mic.

“Doesn’t Barnes make beer?” Sam asked.

“God, probably,” Steve sighed. “Anyway, don’t worry. We’ll find someone for you once we’re not on the run anymore.”

“No, that’s not reassuring, Steve,” Sam said. “Get on my level. We need women who are either very understanding, or are also criminals.”

“Oh,” Steve said, brightening. “I know a lot of those.”

*

He was back in Wakanda again in two weeks, and it was another two weeks before he was gone again. Sometimes the missions were longer—there was one that took nearly eight weeks—and sometimes they were shorter, but he found that once he didn’t go looking for trouble, they maintained a steady two weeks in, two weeks out cycle. In September, Bucky abruptly started reading as voraciously as he had when they were younger, and Steve brought him boxes of books from wherever he happened to go when he realized Bucky could read in a hell of a lot more languages than he had as a teenager. Shuri had found a way to give him access to almost any book he could think of, but at night he would pull out one of the paperbacks Steve had brought him and read aloud while Steve half-dozed against his chest. At first he was indiscriminate and read anything, but as the months wore on, he began to go through phases. There was sci-fi, then poetry, then military history—a mercifully brief phase—then a long stretch of Wakandan authors. Lately it was romance novels, for which Bucky had complicated categories that ranged from “couldn’t finish” to “not too bad” to “the sex scenes were good” to “very French.”

One morning in January, Bucky was already awake and staring out the window when Steve got up. The thoughtful tension on his face and the way he pursed his lips suggested trouble, although he softened when he saw Steve.

“You all right?” Steve asked, dragging on one of Bucky’s shirts.

“I got a message from Shuri,” he said, setting a bead on the table and tapping it. Shuri appeared, shaking her head with a little smile on her face.

“I know you’ve been avoiding me, but the prototype for your arm is finished. Come to the palace so we can test it out. It’s so beautiful, even I want to wear it.”

Steve watched Bucky, waiting for a sign of how to proceed. He knew—had known since the moment they came to Wakanda—that Bucky viewed the loss of the metal arm almost as a blessing. There was no chance for peace, wearing a weapon like that. The fight would come to him no matter what he did.

“You don’t have to,” he said. “You could tell her no.”

“No, I couldn’t,” Bucky said. “I love this place. When you…when you love something, you fight to keep it safe.”

Steve reached for his hand and was glad Bucky didn’t pull away. “Okay,” he said. “So we go to the palace. You try it on. That’s all it ever has to be.”

“Eventually I’ll have to use it. I know that. I’m not worried about that right now. I’m worried about how I’m gonna react when it’s on me. It weighs a lot, you know?” He gave a terrible little smile, and squeezed Steve’s hand.

“Whatever happens, I’ll be there with you,” Steve said. “And Shuri’s probably thought about this too. She might be the smartest person in the world.”

He knew she was, and he knew Bucky knew she was, but that didn’t help much when Bucky was in her lab again. It was clean and bright and cheerful, pleasant, not messy and overflowing like Tony’s—and Howard’s, for that matter—or anesthetic like Banner’s. Her work stations were tidy and cool and dark gray and silver, like the technology she worked with, so Steve was surprised that the prosthetic had a deep blue sheen overlaying the gray, with gold threading through the plates.

“I know you like blue,” she said, and Steve was surprised to see Bucky go red.

“You know too much,” he said. At Steve’s look, he added, “Blue was one of the things that helped me work through the trigger words because it makes me think of you.”

“Sit on the table here,” Shuri said before Steve could even begin to process that, and Bucky sat and pulled off his shirt. The scars around the metal socket had faded until they were hardly noticeable. Steve had spent a lot of time tracing his fingers and lips along that expanse of skin, and he knew it had changed even in the last few months. _I did that_ , Bucky said one night. _A few days, a week after they wiped me, I’d start to try to claw it off me. I didn’t even know why. I just knew I hated it._

Steve suspected his reaction to that knowledge wasn’t as healthy as it could have been, but at least when he channeled his feelings into his work, he got more resolution than most people did.

Bucky turned his head away and closed his eyes, breathing slowly and shakily and holding onto Steve’s hand, while Shuri attached the arm. It clicked into place and all the plates settled in a smooth wave, but it took several minutes for her to make sure it was connected and responsive.

“Can you lift it?” she asked, and he obeyed. “Each finger, one by one. Okay, now hold his hand.”

“I don’t want to touch anyone with it,” Bucky said, his voice going ragged. Steve shifted closer, ready to intervene or stay quiet as necessary, but Bucky didn’t move. All his tension was concentrated on his left side.

“I know you don’t,” Shuri said. “But it will help you to know that it really is just an object. It is a marvelous object, of course, but it holds no inherent goodness or badness.”

Bucky breathed in and out noisily a few times. “Yeah,” he said. “All right. Yeah.”

He sat up straight and opened his eyes, shrugging a few times and swinging the arm around, and reached for Steve’s right hand, pressing metal palm against flesh palm. Steve liked the cool, almost textured feel of it, so different from the slippery, shiny metal of the first arm. He slid their fingers together and held on.

“You have callouses on your knuckles,” Bucky whispered, smiling up at him and tapping the knuckle of his index finger. Steve rubbed his thumb over the metal thumb and bent his head to kiss it before he remembered at the last second that they weren’t alone, and then decided he didn’t care and kissed it anyway, quickly while Shuri was looking down at her tablet.

“The balance is off by a little,” she said. “Here, take it off and we can adjust it for your next visit. Only three weeks this time. No avoiding me for months on end.”

“All right, I promise,” he said. “I have an idea I want to run by you anyway. I’ll draw out the specs.”

“Good,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about goat milking.”

Bucky shook his head. “I have no idea how you haven’t already taken over the world by now. You know, in your spare time.”

She was already walking away from them. “Why would I want to take it over?” she said over her shoulder. “Who wants to take the blame for that mess? Not me.”

*

“Do you think it’s stupid of me not to use the arm?” Bucky asked that night when they were tucked comfortably against each other in bed.

“No,” Steve said. “I’m sure a lot of things would be easier, but if you don’t want it, you don’t want it.”

“The thing is, it’s never going to be just an arm,” Bucky said. “I know it’s only an object, like Shuri said, but when I wear it, it’s part of me. It’s a weapon that’s part of me. Maybe someday I’ll feel different, but for now…only if I have to.”

“I hope you don’t have to,” Steve said. “Not ever again.”

He was drifting off without meaning to, after a long day of running, milking goats, walking to the village, going to the palace, and having sex no less than three times—twice in the shower and once just now, with Bucky riding him in that slow, warm, sweet way he liked best. Steve had learned how to give it to him like that, to hold back and make it last until coming was more like sliding gradually into pleasure so powerful that he could barely breathe. Not that he didn’t like it fast and hard, too; he was a big fan of getting fucked on his hands and knees, head hanging, fingers digging into the mattress. He always lost it pretty quickly that way, especially when Bucky asked him in a low voice _Does it feel good? Are you going to let me make you come?_ , gentle while he fucked him so thoroughly he’d sleep for ten hours at a stretch afterward.

Sometimes he thought the best parts of his time staying with Bucky was spent like this, in the aftermath, quiet, listening to the night sounds. Crickets, the nocturnal birds, the occasional cat or dog fight in the fields. Bucky stroked his hair and he listened to Bucky’s heartbeat carefully, forcing himself to stay awake so he didn’t miss anything. He had almost lost the battle when Bucky’s heart sped up under his ear.

“Did you ever think about us maybe getting married?” Bucky said. Casual, unless you were right next to his heart.

Steve groaned and stretched. “Yeah, a couple of times. Why, do you want to?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, shifting and moving down the bed so they were face to face. “What do you think? Would you marry me?”

“Of course I would. I’d marry you right now if you wanted,” he said.

Bucky’s faced turned thoughtful. “I mean, we could,” he said after a moment.

“Like _right now_ right now?” Steve asked.

“Why not? You know T’Challa would do it, and if he can’t, someone else can.”

Steve stared at him, weighing their options, wondering if Bucky were teasing and then dismissing the thought. “All right,” he said, rolling over and finding his kimoyo bracelet. He tapped the bead he used to contact T'Challa, which showed him status: _excellent health, awake_.

“That’s dangerous,” Bucky said. “Having everybody know when you’re awake and when you’re not. Sometimes you need to fake sleep.”

“I think only the royal family and the Dora Milaje have access to him. And me,” Steve said. “Just for emergencies.”

He tapped it twice and after a moment, T’Challa appeared. “Is something wrong, Captain?”

“No, nothing’s wrong. Just wondering if you feel up to a little midnight wedding ceremony.”

T’Challa was silent so long Steve wondered if there was a glitch. “I will be out to Sergeant Barnes’s hut as soon as possible,” he said at last, and disappeared.

“Did he sound pissed?” Bucky said. “I thought he sounded kind of pissed.”

“Uh, you remember what he sounds like when he’s actually angry, right?” Steve asked.

“We didn’t really chat,” Bucky said.

When T’Challa appeared, it was with such stealth that he almost caught them off guard. The gliders were quiet, Steve knew, but it was hard to get past the goats without offending them in some way, and yet somehow T’Challa, Okoye, and Shuri had done so.

“Do you know what you are getting into?” Shuri asked, pushing her way past them. “It is our custom to have an underground rave for seven days after a wedding.”

“Do not listen to her,” T’Challa said. “Unless…would you like a traditional ceremony?”

Steve looked down at himself and realized he was in his pajama pants and a t-shirt. “No,” he said. “Quick and to the point, I think.”

“Really quick,” Bucky said. “As short as legally possible.”

Okoye had been standing with her back to them, facing out into the field. “There is a ceremony that is only ten words long,” she said.

“We want that one,” Steve said.

“I suppose if you want to go with the most boring option,” Shuri said.

“We are very boring people,” Bucky said.

Shuri had settled into Bucky’s one chair, while Steve and Bucky remained sitting on the edge of the bed. “You could at least stand up,” she said. “And brush your hair so it looks a little less like you just–”

“I have the ritual,” T’Challa said, looking down at his wrist. “This is usually only performed before battle.”

“That’s fitting,” Steve said, and decided he might as well stand. He took Bucky’s hand, and Bucky stood as well, looking a little disgruntled about it.

“Let us begin,” T’Challa said. “Do you promise to honor and cherish one another forever?”

“Yes,” Steve said.

“Define honor,” Bucky said.

Shuri laughed with her whole body, making the chair creak. “You have to wait until you are alone to tell him when he’s stupid,” she said.

“Yeah, I can’t promise that.”

“Well, then, you do something to make up for it afterward,” Okoye said from the doorway.

“Like _kiss his hand_ ,” Shuri said.

Steve stared at the ceiling. “I swear to god someone said this would be quick.”

“Compelling arguments all around,” Bucky said. “All right, I promise.”

“Then you are united,” T’Challa said, tapping the bead that had shown him the ritual. He tapped three in a row and added, “When you touch this bead, the marriage will be registered with the palace.”

They both placed their index fingers on the bead and it gave a slight shock. Steve watched Bucky’s name appear on the inside of his wrist in fine black writing. Once the light from the bead faded, the letters disappeared.

“Should one of you be harmed, the other will be alerted,” T’Challa explained. “As I said, it is a battle ceremony.”

Steve stared at his wrist. “When it happens, call Carol,” he murmured.

“What?”

“How does it alert the other person?” He flexed his hand, rubbing his fingers over his wrist, remembering the deep, burning ache.

“I have been told there is a burning sensation,” Okoye said.

“Does it last?” he asked. “If I died, would his wrist hurt forever?”

They were all staring at him.

“I dreamed about this,” he said. “I’m not trying to widow anyone.”

“Good. Your life insurance policy is not great, Steve,” Bucky said.

“I have to call Fury,” he said. “I’m not even sure at this point how to get ahold of him, but there’s something he needs to know. And you too, I think, T’Challa—I don’t know what this means.”

He was already feeling around for his phone, finding it wedged into the side of the bed. “Call Natasha,” he said, hoping it would know what her latest number was. She periodically reprogrammed everything and gave them all new phones, and he couldn’t remember if he’d ever called her with this one.

“New York,” she said when she picked up.

“39th,” he said after a moment. She changed their challenge and response whenever she felt like it too, and often forgot to update him.

“What’s up? Are you all right?”

“Maybe. Do you know how to get in contact with Fury?” He could feel the others still staring at him, and knew he was going to sound insane. “I have a message for him from…him. I think. In a dream.”

“I can contact him,” she said. He waited for her to ask more questions, but that was the beauty of Natasha. No questions asked.

“Okay. The message is ‘When it happens, call Carol.’ I don’t remember much else.”

“Got it,” she said. “And Steve, I was just about to call you and Sam. Wanda and Vision are off the grid again. Nearest I can tell, maybe Glasgow.”

“We could give them a little time to themselves,” Steve said.

“We did give them time,” she said. “You know I want those crazy kids to make it work, but something weird is going on. Vision is popping up in worldwide chatter.”

“Vision?” he said. “How many people even know–”

“Exactly. Time to round up the troops,” she said. “I’ll send coordinates.”

Bucky had already grabbed Steve’s go bag and tossed it on the bed.

“I’ll explain on the way,” Steve said to T’Challa and Okoye. “When I get back from this one, Buck, I swear I’m not going anywhere for a month. Maybe we’ll go to Fiji with Sam.”

“All right, all right,” Bucky said. “Just hurry it up. And don’t die. You don’t even have a will.”

He grinned, waiting until the others had left the hut before he pressed a quick, joyful kiss to the corner of Bucky’s mouth. “If I die, congratulations, you’re the proud owner of every dirty sock I’ve left here.”

“ _Go_ ,” Bucky said, nudging him, and he left, hopping into T’Challa’s glider back to the palace.

*

“What did you get up to this weekend?” Sam asked when they were in the jet in Tanga.

“Not much,” he said, pulling on his gloves. “Went to the market with Bucky. Got married.”

The silence behind him was eloquent.

“I hope you’re joking,” Sam said.

“Nope,” Steve said. “What kind of joke would that be anyway?”

“I don’t know, you’re different since you got with Barnes. You sleep now, right? Maybe you joke now too.”

“It was spur of the moment.” Steve smiled down at his hands, flexing them. “I just didn’t want to wait another second. I’ve waited too long for a lot of things.”

“Aw, man, now I can’t even be mad.” Sam patted him on the shoulder and pulled him in for a bulky, awkward hug, tac vests mashed together. “Congratulations. Now he’s stuck with you.”

The jet was quiet for a while as they strapped weapons into their clothes and on their bodies. Sam’s phone pinged and he said, “Natasha’s at the pickup. And she says—what the hell. She wants to know where you’re registered.”

“Does she have the jet bugged, do you think?” Steve asked.

“She might just be creepy as hell,” Sam said. “You can’t rule that out. Or maybe she’s already on the jet.”

“Where?” Steve asked, gesturing around them. “In the engine?”

“I’m just saying that you never think Natasha is as out there as Natasha actually is,” Sam said. “She’s got schemes upon schemes upon schemes.”

“Sam,” Steve said, for what seemed like the fiftieth time. “She does not have a secret twin.”

“How do you know? You don’t know.” Sam lifted his hands with one finger already stretched out, ready to elaborate, but Steve’s wrist began to vibrate, and when he looked at the beads he realized it was not Bucky, not Shuri, not T’Challa.

“It’s Tony,” he said, biting his lip.

“You gonna answer it?” Sam asked.

“I think I have to.” He tapped the bead. “Uh, this is Steve.”

“We’re not done talking about Natasha. My list is just getting longer,” Sam said, and Steve waved him off.

“…Bruce,” said the voice using Tony’s phone.

“Bruce?” Steve asked. “Banner? What are you–”

“No time, Steve. Tony’s gone. Do you know where Vision is?”

“We’re on our way to Scotland to see if we can find him right now.”

“Well, you’d better hurry,” Bruce said. “I’m gonna try to make this short and sweet. Do you remember the Tesseract?”


End file.
